Hard to be articulate on Friday night, Chet W.

Enjoying the discussion, Chet W.

Music is a wonderful thing, Chet W.

Frank I.T.S.

What's a folksong? A folksong is a song collected from a traditional singer. (What do you mean by 'collected'.) What's a traditional singer? Any brave soul want to start the ball (or battle) rolling?

But if I'm going to go to the trouble of learning a song and singing it with regularity--I want to make it mine, and let it live through me, and as someone who now posseses the song and uses it for my own purposes (whether public performance or private entertainment), I reserve the right to make whatever subtle (or not-so-subtle) changes necessary to personalize the song and make it my own.

The accretion of these changes, as the communal song is made personal and then passed along to others, is the folk process; when a song becomes distant enough from its original composer to have this process wreaked upon it, it becomes a folk song.

I've heard performers who seem anxious to turn living folksongs into artifacts. On the other extreme, there have always been performers who use folksongs as the basis for musical experiments. A good song, that tells a good story, like "Barbara Allen" will shine through in both cases.

That's my two cents. Looking forward to the big fight.

A folksong is whatever we think it is at any given moment.

In Memphis (Flk.Alliance) you can see that NOBODY agrees on what a folksongs is!

Bill Broonzy said he never heard a horse sing. Just people. So all songs are folksongs.

Mountain climbers say they climb a mountain because it's there. I sing folksongs because (for the most part) IT ISN'T THERE!!

Once wrote a letter to the editor on this WHAT'S A FOLKSONG question saying, "I know what I like! I like folksongs! Other songs (mostly) I don't like (except Thelonious, Bird, Diz, Chet Baker & a few thousand others). So--if ya want to know if it's a folksong just ask me! If I like it, it is one! If I don't like it, it aint one.

Reminds me of a Bellafonte calypso tune called "Man Piab"----IT WAS CLEAR AS MUD AND IT COVERED THE GROUND AND THE CONFUSION MADE MY BRAIN GO 'ROUND!!

Robert Kennedy once said, "30% of the people are against everything ALL THE TIME!" (or does this belong with the Kennedy thread?????) (Whoops, no--it should be an ALL NEW ROBERT Kennedy thread.)

Again I'm reminded of the Buddhist saying about JOYOUS PARTICIPATION IN THE SORROWS OF THE WORLD! (But then this should be in that strange Buddhist thread.)

This is all enough to make one ANTISEMANTIC!

Probably it's time to end this (If it wasn't for time we'd have to do everything all at once!!)

I love it all! Art (SMILE--please)

This

It would be nice if performers could be more precise about what they play, nowadays if I see in the newspapers that So and So, folksinger/songwriter/guitarist etc. is playing, it doesn't tell me a lot. Or one I've seen frequently "Folk music concert" with So and So. I often simply don't go, my free time is too rare to gamble.

Frank the-more-I-think-about-it-the-more-I-grumble.

I just love your definition

"If I like it, it is one! If I don't like it, it aint one."

I suggest we use it for the next Mudcat Tee Shirt.

Bert.

Singers of folksongs are usually generous in citing the sources of their songs, but reseach of many scholars has turned up the writers of some of the songs. Why don't the songwriters get credits, too. It seems to me that it's pretty rare that they do.

Elsie sort of took on people 'head-on'...not always condusive to productive discussion! I would rather analyze it to death!

For those who are new...this has been chewed on at length with about the amount of consensus you'd imagine! I am hoping to convert the world to MY viewpoint..*grin*..but I end up making it so complicated that no one will read far enough to agree with me!

Basically, my attuitude is..." everyone can..and should..like & sing whatever kind of songs moves them, but if we have 'NO' agreement about catagories, it creates problems when labeling bins in record stores and assembling material for databases of songs online"

Frank in the swamps said.."It would be nice if performers could be more precise about what they play, nowadays if I see in the newspapers that So and So, folksinger/songwriter/guitarist etc. is playing, it doesn't tell me a lot. Or one I've seen frequently "Folk music concert" with So and So. I often simply don't go, my free time is too rare to gamble."

that is MY point...made better than I have made it in the past....forgive me Art, but I have heard that line about 'horses don't sing' way too often! It is cute, but it solves NOTHING! There are, in the links section of the Mudcat, many lists of WWW pages where one may find songs/music of different kinds, and if I want a 'country-western' song, there is a place or two to go look. And, to get to the point: If I want to immerse myself in folk/traditional music for the day, I want to go to a record store, or a concert, or a database..etc.. and be confident that the majority of what I find there is what I expected, and not vaguely related stuff put there by those who think that 'folk' began with Bob Dylan!

You find this problem in almost EVERY area where people have different backgrounds, interests, hobbies, tastes and opinions on what is good, fun, tasteful...etc...Quilt collectors argue, gourmet food addicts argue about whether 'X' recipe is 'traditional', beer drinker argue about whether Budweiser is 'real beer' (of course it isn't!! *wink*)

so...even though is is not EASY to construct a way to evaluate whether song 'x', done at 'x' tempo, with 'x' tune, and 'x' words...etc..is 'really' folk or not, it certainly IS possible to exclude some songs...or there is no use having a logo on this forum which says " a magazine devoted to blues and folk music".....surely even those of you who kind of like 'a bit of everything' can see that statements like "if I like it, it's folk" are of little use in a 'serious' discussion about what to put into a concert, database, or record bin. I personally LIKE (and sing) a number of songs which I know are not traditional, but is I were to make a record, or give a concert labeled 'folk' I would feel obligated to do things which fit mostly 'folk/trad' related criteria. Yep...the line is often fuzzy...what was obviously NOT folk 40 years ago may be borderline now...and 40 years from now, may be totally accepted.Just because a song is done with an acoustic guitar, by a singer who also once sang 'The Great Silkie', it is NOT automatically included!! And, I'm sorry, but calling yourself a folksinger because you know 10 'Peter, Paul & Mary' songs does not work! And neither does the jump in logic that says "because I am a 'folksinger', anything I sing is a 'folksong'". There are a couple of 'traditional' tules of logic broken there!

Tsk,,,Bruce..you done pushed the button!! But I suppose this has to be done now & then, if only to stir up our brain cells and remind us that it ain't all obvious!

I'd like to hear some opinions on this. If a folksong is 400 years old, obviously there are going to be many versions and the most common version today is probably not going to be the original. Let's say the most common version is only 200 years old. That's good enough for us to call traditional but what about 200 years ago? Were there people then complaining that no one does the old songs right anymore? How about 200 years from now, will the Fairport Convention version be traditional?

It seems to me obvious there is no 'one' correct version a traditional tune. A traditional tune is just that, a traditional tune. There are a few instances where it seems that someone didn't record the tune of a traditional singer or player correctly, and only in such a case do I think there is a basis for saying the tune isn't a correct 'traditional' tune. But all really traditional tunes are correct traditional tunes, even if they aren't the 'original' tune for the song. [It has been argued by some competent musicologists that 'Londonderry Air' wasn't noted down correctly; it's just too unlike any other known Irish air, and possible corrections have been suggested.]

P.S.---- To better understand why Big Bill made his obviously tongue-in-cheek comment about "horses singin" and "all songs being folksongs", just take a look at the amazing musically diverse career of this extremely talented musician. He never let on to the urban folkies that he had previously played many other styles of music. When Doc Watson first came to the University of Chicago Folk Festival in '62 he never mentioned he'd played electric guitar in a rock-a-billy band for years to earn money.He came there with Clarence Ashley who didn't want to talk of his early career as a minstrel show performer for fear it would ruin his standing with the...Oh, what the hell---I'm getting sick o' this argument. It's been going on for 50 years I know of personally. And I'm angry with myself for bein' drawn in again. P.S.-----My son once told me he wanted to be a folksinger when he grew up. I told him he couldn't have it both ways!

Funny how tastes go, Doc Watson, I can take or leave, but Clarence Ashley, Doc Boggs, and a few others I loved, and still have records of many of their songs. I finally convinced one son that being a full time professional juggler wasn't really a red hot idea. Now he's a computer programer in Silicon Valley during the week and juggler on the weekends.

[This was typed up hours ago, then I got bogged down in some ABC's just sent to SCOTS-L, and forgot this one. But Joe Offer has now set the stage for it very nicely.]

It seems strange that in literature the author usually gets the credit, but except after they're famous the songwriters, usually don't.

I picked up a book on the all the songs that made the hit parade list from 1890 to 1954, 'Pop Memories' by Joel Whitburn, 1986. We find in it the singers, date song made the hit parade, position on the list, weeks on the list, band or ochestra acompanying the song, record label and number, just about everything except who wrote the song and who composed the tune.

One page in the back, p. 635, lists songwriters and composer of the 21 songs that won academy awards for movies songs, and the two pages following list the 40 songs and songwriters honored in the 'National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame'. P. 639 lists 30 songs from the Billboard Disc Jockey Polls. All these are a minuscule fraction of the total number of songs noted in the book. The performers get almost all of the credit. They should get some, but it seems to me that the major credit should go the the inventors.

But that seems to have always been the situation. I've seen it stated that the writers of the 17th century English broadside ballads got 1 shilling for each song accepted for publication. Entry in the Stationers' Register constituted copyright protection for the publisher, not the author. The Stationers' Register rarely name the author, and then only when the publisher wished to note it.

In spite of this we now know that Laurence Price wrote "The Demon Love/ House Carpenter" (Child #243, ZN2466), "The Famous Flower of Serving Men" (Child #106, ZN2944) and "Robin Hood's Golden Prize" (Child #147, RZN11). Folksongs versions of Price's other ballads are "Some Rival/ The American's have stolen my dearest away" (ZN1980) and "The Merry Haymakers" (ZN800). Evidence is incomplete, but he probably also wrote the English folk carol "All you that are to mirth inclined" ("The Sinner's Redemption", ZN112). I've heard most of these sung, but with never a mention of Price. Martin Parker, Thomas Robbins, Lawrence White, and Joseph Martin are among other 17th century ballad writers that wrote songs that have become folksongs. Samuel Smithson wrote a parody of the Robin Hood ballads (probably a dig at Thomas Robbins, who wrote 3 of them), (Child #150, RZN3), but Prof. Child, not quite fathoming Smithson's sense of humor, called it a silly ballad, precisely what Smithson intended.

I'm always a little annoyed when somebody asked for the singer[s] Z's song, then names a folksong, as if Z had invented the folksong. They are folksongs because they have outlasted at least two generations of singers. If it's Z's song and Z is still living it isn't a folksong in my book.

My stringent definitions drops out a lot of conflated texts of songs like 'The Seeds of Love/ Sprig of Thyme' and other such lyrics, because no one traditional singer is known to have sung the song that way. Where do we draw a line, or can we?

Even in the English Folk Song and Dance Society's early journals, traditional tunes were often given with verses partially or almost completely drawn from a chapbook or broadside text, so we have a lot of traditional tunes, but a lost less really traditional songs there.

I was initially appalled at some of the songs in Alfred Williams 'Folk Songs of the Upper Thames'. There were a lot that at that time I didn't consider to be folk songs at all. Now I think Williams probably has a good sampling of what traditional singers really sang, and he didn't listen for only the type of songs that other collectors were trying to get that fit those collectors notion of what was a folksong.

So I agree with your terminology, Bruce, but also I don't think it clarifies matters to say that a tune is traditional if it is sung by a traditional singer. That is just begging the question. What, then, constitutes a traditional singer?

Let me kick something in for a starter, and see what develops. I would take a traditional singer as one who learned his (old) songs from someone else (not directly from some book, broadside or chapbook) and sings them to himself or an audience, but someone who usually does it for free entertainment for the audience. I wouldn't exclude some singing for pay or other remuneration, it that wasn't the primary occupation of the singer.

I think the songs would have to be learned from another traditional singer, and ideally should be 60 years or more from any printed source.

Back up to Alice's posting of Herbert Hughes comments. It seems there are two ways to look at 'correct traditional tune'. By definition a traditional tune is a 'correct' traditional tune. There are big problems in correctly noting them down with all the timing variations and ornamentations of a tune that a traditional singer uses, and folklorists have written articles on this. I am not about junk all tunes that aren't taken from hi-fi recordings of traditional singers. We wouldn't have many left.

I say hi-fi here for a reason. The 'Grieg-Duncan Folk Song Collection' is now complete in 7 volumes as to the texts and tunes, 1515 different songs. A few years after Greig and Duncan had collected these songs an American by the name of Carpenter went to the British Isles, and recorded quite a few of these songs from the singers that had supplied the versions in the Greig and Duncan collections. This was done on an early wire recorder, and the results are terrible by modern standards. [Original and taped copies in Library of Congress and copy at Ralph Vaughn Williams Memorial Library of EFDSS] The wire speed varied considerably and noise is big. It's hard (impossible for me on a few songs) to understand the words in the verses, and I don't know how one would note the tunes. [Audio specialists know how, by Fourier transform methods, to compensate to some extent for the variable wire speed and do frequency domain filtering out of much of the noise. The cost to do this is at present prohibative to have done professionally, and it's maybe now just possible for a talented computer jock to do some of it on a personal computer with enough extra software and hardware for digitizing long files (hi-fi .WAV files for about 3 to 4 minutes duration) and with Fourier transform programs that can access extended or expanded menmory.]

Add your own categories, there must be more. My favorite one is ENDANGERED, I think that folk singers have a duty to sing any song which, in their opinion, should not be forgotten. This duty exists whether or not others consider the song folk.

Collecting is still going on, but collectors don't have it easy. Fields are not as green as they used to be, and financial support for a folklorist to do field collecting is practically non-existant. Some like Peter Kennedy have managed to make a living from publication of books and issuance of recordings, but I don't think many collectors died rich men (or women). A recent Ph. D. graduate as a folklorist has a difficult time finding a job.

My sister in Washington state became acquainted with a retired logger, fisherman and handyman from Alaska that knew lots of old and unfamiliar songs that he had learned in his younger days in Alaska. I inquired at the library of Congress Folklore Archive for name and address of a folklorist in Washington state, and got it. However, the state had fired him, not being sure that they needed a folklorist, and the position was in limbo for about two years, and the last word I ever received in reply was that the folklorist was reapplying for a job as state folklorist. By this time the old logger had died.

TRADITIONAL----Songs we all know but we MUST sing them from the book (folk bible) RISE UP SINGING!

FAMILY TRADITIONAL----Inbreeding within our family causing mutations like the two-faced double standards often exhibited on this (and other) music scenes!

FOLK-----any carbon-based creature EXCEPT HORSES!! (Sorry Big Bill!)

SPONSORED-----What one must have when attending Folksongs Anonymous meetings!

ENDANGERED----The feeling that causes one to cross to the other side of the street because a banjo player is seen approaching on your side of the street!

PSEUDO FOLK-----Sings old ballads but wears BLUE PSEUD SHOES! (rarely gets gigs)

SINGER/SONGWRITER-----A stoolpigeon who now resides in SING/SING!

FOLK D.J.-----Similar to a folk O.J.---They get away with murder!

FOLK ALLIANCE-------Britain and Ireland (AND all the folks writing in these threads) AGREE TO MAKE PEACE!!!!

Affectionately, Art Thieme

This thread reminds me so much of Herbert Hughes writings, that I had to go back to his introduction to Vol.4 to add this quote,
"To the folk-lorist, as to the sociologist, the present phase of our national life presents an unprecedented spectacle. With the creation of a limited Free State has come the intensive cultivation of Irish in the national schools. This has raised problems, economic and scholastic, which it is not my business to discuss here. The policy, far-seeing though it may be, is, however, having curious paradoxical reactions in the domain of folk-music. Partly through a desire for standardisation, and partly through the modifications created by music print, the old rhapsodic beauty of such songs as [two title printed in a Gaelic type font] is being shorn and trimmed into a neat Anglicisation which it is the very object of authorities to avoid. Children with beautiful voices, singing in unison and phrasing with admirable unanimity, are unconsciously helping on this deadly work day by day, and unless the matter is taken in hand now the next generation, brought up even more effectively on compulsory Irish, will receive a tainted and discredited legacy.
This is a danger, of course, that does not confront the more modern Anglo-Irish ballads of the kind included in these pages. These are songs of leisure and relaxation sung in the kitchen or round the public-house fire, songs that conform more easily than do the traditional Irish to the notation of the tempered scale. More than once I have had to abandon the attempt to make an air fit into the conventional five-lines-and-four-spaces of a musical clef, a difficulty that generally besets the "collector" of Irish tunes. The question of harmonisation I have fully discussed in previous volumes, and I need only admit once more that much of the essential character of an old song is lost the moment it is brought into contact with harmony - in other words, with the piano. At the best, it is created anew, and if the spirit is retained that is all the interfering musician can hope for."

Sincerely, Chet W.

Other than having new words and a new tune these are the same old songs also! Art

seriously, though..that lets me get on MY soapbox...IF someone tried to sell you that axe, you'd look at him pretty funny!!It may be a FINE axe...but it isn't G.W.'s!!

We all know that songs get changed-sometimes accidently, sometimes on purpose, and we all have our personal opinions about the virtues of the changes, both in general and in particular cases.

My point is, that IF we at least keep track of those changes and know ..'to the best of our ability'..how it WAS, we are then able to choose more easily and discuss more intelligently, and most important, SORT these songs, so that those who particularly WANT the old ones..(or the 'new' ones, for that matter), ot the ones of a certain style, can find them!
I think that Bruce O. believes this, and makes more effort than most of us to discover origins....I simply 'like' a lot of the older songs and styles better, and though I have no inate aversion to 'folk-processing', I dislike it when the processor is set on 'puree'.
....So, the discussion of 'trad' vs 'non-trad' is, for me, a truly pragmatic one.... I NEED a little corner of the world where I can retreat when I want to hear, study, and explore the 'non-singer-sonwriter', 'non-Kingston Trio', 'non-pop/folk/rock' world.

Let me try to say this as clearly as possible....
"I DO NOT CLAIM THAT OTHER KINDS OF MUSIC ARE INFERIOR-ONLY THAT IF WE DUMP THEM ALL INTO THE SAME BARREL, I WILL HAVE A LOT MORE TROUBLE FIND THE ONES I WANT" ...yes, it IS work coming up with a sorting system...and even more work getting those with very wide-ranging tastes to agree that any manner of sorting is even desirable, but it is NOT a silly or unreasonable thing.
...This internet thing is fast...I have bookmarks for MANY different music sites...I am perfectly willing to go one place for serious gospel and another for bluegrass...(wouldn't the bluegrass sites have a fit if someone started asking them for Child ballads!)

One problem here is Max's cleverness..(if doing amazing stuff can be called a 'problem')...NO place else seems to have anything like this forum...it is just TOO tempting for someone who 'just wants some lyrics' to something P,P &M did...or someone who 'just needs a tune' to his favorite Irish melody...or someone who 'really wants the chords' to his favorite singer-songwriter's hit...to pop in here and beg. I can't say I blame them...thet need someone to make a forum similar to this for THEM ,so we could refer them to a better venue...(and some of our more knowlegeable regulars are doing this)

Perhaps you might argue that if I have such a narrow notion of what I want in a database/forum, why don't I start my own? Well, obviously, it ain't easy to do what Max has done...and suppose I had the skills? What would I call it?

Unless I made it something like "The Totally Traditional, Purist-Snob, No pop music allowed ,Reactionary, 'We don't have anything past 1923' Database", I would soon have the same situation. Those who outnumber me would come flocking in...lets face it..there are more Mary Chapin Carpenter fans than Jeanie Robertson fans!
...Now, I have said before that I am quite aware that this is NOT my place...Max runs the forum, and Dick fills the database...and they are BOTH more eclectic and forgiving than I would be.... so I do not pretend for a moment that I can do anything more than express an opinion.---and I guess I have just done that!...so, sing, play, enjoy any durn thing you want, my friends...I just hope that when you do it here, the sign on the door that reads 'for blues and folk music' will cause you to reflect a bit on your choices...

*stepping down from soapbox and fading into the crowd as others shout for THEIR turn*

1. I'm perfectly happy to let people who know what they're talking about define traditional songs and I'm glad they come here and share it with the rest of us.

2. The Mudcat database is called a "folksong" database. I think we all agree that, for better or worse, folksong no longer equates to traditional song. This database encompases all the many and varied definitions of folk (to the horror of some and the joy of others.) If Bruce had a database it would be a wonderful, useful, important thing. No one in their right mind would go there looking for Peter, Paul and Mary songs. On the other hand, it's good that people can come here to find Peter Paul and Mary songs, as well as the "correct" versions of songs done by PP&M.

3. The forum should have no limitations. The discussions will tend to be about things that interest people who also have an interest in the database, but not even limited to music (e.g. "Urban Myths.") If no one is interested in a thread, they won't respond. If someone is really on the wrong track they can be gently directed elsewhere.

as to #3, though, I wonder if you mean 'NO' limits? I presume Max would 'edit' it if it got too far afield (like into bicycle repair), but even now a lot of threads drift pretty far from what I would expect on a page with 'folk music' on the door..(I guess 'urban myths' IS a kind of folklore..*shrug*)

I think I added "When this old hat was new" to a thread, about 9-10 month ago, but can't remember the name of the thread. I've since then heard LaMarca and her husband sing the traditional version.

Whenever we attempt to apply hard and fast rules, we will undoubtably exclude a whole bank of tunes that someone else may consider to be their favorite "folk songs."

For instance, can we really say that the folk revival of the sixties *killed* folk music? Does that mean that future generations have nothing to look forward to and sing about? I certainly hope not.

I could go on (and on and on...), but I can't even see why we should exclude songs sung by horses. After all, I think Mr Ed once did a rendition of "Camptown Ladies." ;)

Anyway, we probably agree on the meanings of the terms more than we disagree. The discussion does remind me of a line from Ken Kesey's "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" that I'd like to mis-quote here:

"We can't define that term, because if we say that it is one thing, then it can't be something else."

I guess the important thing is to keep a song in your heart, and teach it to a young'un somewhere along the line.