Just to keep the pot stirred (as if it needs it :)

If Yellow Submarine and California Dreamin' and stuff like that are defined as "not folk", while, say, Child #57 is defined as "folk", then it seems to me that we are divorcing folk songs as a genre from the folk who are supposed to be defining the term. There's buckets of songs we've lost the music to, and old songs that nobody sings anymore (at least not without heavy editing) -- when was the last time you heard someone sing The Hunting of the Cheviot ? -- how can we call these "folk" if they're not part of a folk tradition? Is "folk" just an academic term now, with no real meaning ?

Folk songs -- well, "songs", since the definition is under debate -- are being spontaneously created today, in groups which have group singing as an aspect of their shared culture. For example, there are plenty of talented songwriters in the SCA, many of whom write in the old bardic tradition of spoofing political figures and recording the interesting events of the day.

A lot of these modern songs are dismissed as "filk" -- since they are often new words written to an older tune (no "real" folk songs have ever been written to an older tune ! :). Yet, plenty of these songs not only have a wide distribution (I ran across several I had supposed were East Coast local -- The Birthday Dirge and others -- in a group I joined in Edinburgh), but are also transmitted orally. I learned "Debauched and Depraved" and "Woad" around a campfire. As with anything orally transmitted, verses and words are lost, added or changed, and the original authors are lost (I didn't find out "Debauched and Depraved" -- or whatever it's really called -- came out of a fantasy novel until years later, and I still don't know who wrote "Woad").

What of songs learned at summer camp, or on scouting trips ? If "On Top of Old Smokey" counts, why not "California Dreamin'"? What about "folk" songs written in living memory, like "Barrett's Privateers" or "Bread and Roses" ?

Also, what of the contention that writing down a folk song essentially kills it, since that (supposedly) takes it out of the oral tradition ? Is every index in the DT a grave marker ?

Gah ! sorry, didn't realize I was rabbiting on like this... :)

Tamara