The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #155357 Message #3655018
Posted By: MikeL2
29-Aug-14 - 03:25 PM
Thread Name: What makes a new song a folk song?
Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
Hi
Oh dear he we go again trying to define the (almost) undefinable.
For most of my life I have been a musician, not always in the professional sense.
I have played in bands and groups and solo playing all kinds of music.
I played in "folk" clubs and sang " folk" songs but in no way did I consider myself as a folk singer.
One thing I have observed in this journey is that in the folk world their is a great division between traditional folk music and "other" folk music. In my view there is a sort of snob value that tries to separate and divide. This is not only with the musicians but with the audiences too.
I played a lot of jazz. Like many ( if not most ) jazz musicians I regularly crossed over from the Modern Jazz that I loved, to Traditional Jazz that I also enjoyed, and back.
In my experience there was no wide gulf in feeling between the various musicians in fact the opposite.
We used to play together and share knowledge and skills in a way that I never knew with "folk".
To get back on the thread I agree with Musket and believe that a very small percentage of folk musicians neither know about the 1954 "agreement" and much less care about it.
Play the music....whatever it is..
Cheers
MikeL2