The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #173932   Message #4218864
Posted By: Robert B. Waltz
11-Mar-25 - 12:14 PM
Thread Name: Traditional Singers and singers of Trad
Subject: RE: Traditional Singers and singers of Trad
Dave the Gnome asked, Is there any music 'learned in the tradition' nowadays?

Sure. I learned "White Coral Bells" from my mother, who did not know where she learned it. Two or three other songs, too. My father knows several songs insulting other schools. And kids often learn a lot of songs at summer camps.

And how many of you learned "The Worms Crawl In" from a professional singer?

In most of those cases, there was an intermediate print stage. But, as we now know, that's normal.

I can't cite any instances of someone learning a Big Ballad from tradition (though, curiously, the way I learned "Lord Randall" doesn't resemble any version I've ever seen anywhere, and I've seen a lot; I wonder if I heard it on a playground somewhere). But that doesn't mean tradition is dead; it just means that it isn't preserving the stuff it used to.