The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #128012 Message #2865490
Posted By: glueman
16-Mar-10 - 03:59 PM
Thread Name: What defines a traditional song?
Subject: RE: What defines a traditional song?
"many of these songs would indeed have been forgotten if they had not been collected.."
What I find interesting is why the songs became unfashionable in the milieu that generated them but certain individuals maintained them. Equally interesting is the reason why bourgeois connouisseurs valorised them as domestic-exotic artifacts and the working classes in the C20th mimicked the taste for collection.
Some songs could have disappeared and no doubt many did, though by no means all - which would have survived? Much as I admire traditional songs I've always had the feeling I'm listening to the results of interventionist policies which resulted in a snapshot view of refined Victorian tastes for the products of an amorphous peasantry.
As a lesson in ostension the continuing myths of folksong are fascinating.