How much Folk Music is there?

Subject: RE: How much Folk Music is there?
From: Mary Humphreys
Date: 14 Sep 07 - 11:34 AM

You have the wrong Malcolm there, Dick.

Malcolm Taylor is the librarian at the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, based at C#House.
Mary.

Subject: RE: How much Folk Music is there?
From: The Sandman
Date: 14 Sep 07 - 12:53 PM

Apologies,to both Malcolms.
Folkie Dave,the pot calling the kettle black,what was that about Glor na Gael ,Never organising music competitions.

Subject: RE: How much Folk Music is there?
From: Folkiedave
Date: 14 Sep 07 - 05:14 PM

Glor na nGael is a government-funded programme to support the Irish language. It may as I said do this in a number of ways - but it is a programme to support the Irish language. That's what it says on its website and I believe it. It does it by having a series of local committees.

If you say you judged music competitions I believe you did so - but they were local music competitions designed by local committees to raise money in all probability, or to raise the profile of the Irish language.

Why not offer them your £200.00? I am sure they would appreciate it and the EFDSS might then see what they missed.

Subject: RE: How much Folk Music is there?
From: The Sandman
Date: 14 Sep 07 - 05:56 PM

no, again you show your ignorance,
The Glor na gael competitiions, I judged were not that,they involved people from the whole county[county Cork is the largest county]and were designed not to raise money,but to encourage Irish traditional music/song and the Irish language.
You have already insulted the organisers and the participants,by saying they probably organise beetle drives,[How Patronising and uninformed]
what you cant get in to your head is that Glor Na Gael,Comhaltas,and the GAA Scor[the last two organise national competitions]are responsible to a large extent for the extremely high standard of Irish song music and dance among children and teenagers.
Would you not like to see the children of England enjoying traditional music,and getting the satisfaction of acquiring musical skills,if you do then think about it,it may not be ideal but it works.

Subject: RE: How much Folk Music is there?
From: Folkiedave
Date: 14 Sep 07 - 06:34 PM

Every time I go to a folk festival I see children playing. Folk Arts England encourages them.

I said it was to raise money or to promote the Irish language.

Glad you agree with me. ..were designed not to raise money,but to encourage Irish traditional music/song and the Irish language

If the organisers of Clor na nGael believe I have insulted them let them get in contact with me Dick.

Dick you were the man who thought the highly respected fiddle player, author and post office worker - Malcolm Douglas, was the highly respected librarian at the RVWML - Malcolm Taylor.

Subject: RE: How much Folk Music is there?
From: Folkiedave
Date: 15 Sep 07 - 04:44 AM

I read this on another thread:

This forum bans (some) female protagonists for being overtly contentious. Please ban this silly captain person. He seems to bring out the worst in everyone with his obvious need for self-important confrontations. And his English/grammar/typing skills/coherence/argument diminishes as the whisky bottle empties.
Leave him alone - he might go away.

I am not in favour of bans. But I must agree with the last sentence.

Subject: RE: How much Folk Music is there?
From: The Sandman
Date: 15 Sep 07 - 02:09 PM

There is still fresh material being collected,an international approach is healthy.Alan Lomax tried this approach successfully 30 to 40 years ago.The likelihood is the more remote an area,the more success you will have in finding it[but keepaway from the Borneo HeadHunters]
Dave,a lotof people on this forum[including yourself]have a nom de plume,I assumed Malcolm Douglas was a nom de plume,I have apologised.
You in your ignorance accused me of talking nonsense[the subject was did Glor na Gael organise music competitions]I pointed out to you that I had Judged at two such competitions ,so they do .
I gave my apology,I am still waiting for yours.

Subject: RE: How much Folk Music is there?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 18 Sep 07 - 09:23 AM

A discussion about the song JOHN THE REVELATOR includes this excerpted post:

Subject: RE: ADD: John the Revelator ^^
From: WYSIWYG - PM
Date: 17 Sep 07 - 09:08 AM

This is an example of how a spiritual can pop out of the past. I can't know for sure if this IS one of those, but it illustrates the difficulty of "tracing" an "attributed" song. It also evinces the musician's approach of just DOING it and not worrying about the origin because (A) the song stands on its own and (B) because the singer's relationship with the origin is an internal experience (and (C) sometimes a mystical one).

When I songlead/teach a spiritual or a song styled as a spiritual, I start out (just like Son does in this video), singing both the call and the response parts and using body language to point up which is which. Where Son leaves off in this video (because it is, after all, a performance), I go on (because I am, after all, songleading) to get the people involved in the responses.

For a performer it's the whole, many-layered experience of the performance that matters. For me, when I songlead, it's about the whole experience of the interactivity. "Interactivity" (what a sterile term for a richly organic complexity) was one of the main thrusts of the spirituals, among the people who originated them.... In that interactivity I feel (organically) the privilege of being able to share at least that much with the originators.


Further support for this view (of likely spirituals-originating material popping into mainstream culture later) can be found in the work of the late JOE CARTER, especially in an interview that includes songs, persectives, and how he remembers learning spirituals through family memories (referenced in the African American Spirituals Permathread).

Additionally, an early variant noted upthread is from the same general time period as the The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip (a Library of Congress collection also referenced in the African American Spirituals Permathread): The fieldnotes, prepared by John and Ruby Lomax during and shortly after their 1939 recording trip in the South, contain their itinerary, notes on the geography and culture of the regions visited, biographical and anecdotal information on some performers, historical and descriptive information on some recordings,excerpts from correspondence, lists of song titles, typed portions of song text, and handwritten song text. During that time period-- within the life span of former slaves-- a lot of songs were shifting out of memory and into the growing Black Gospel and Blues traditions. There are MANY songs first accepted in widestream culture as "blues" that have turned out, with later attributive detail added, to have been based on/extended textually from spirituals.

The Fort collection of that time period is further contemporaneous illustration.

My point is not that these can be "proved" as spirituals, but that an early recording or text date syaing otherwise does not DISPORIVE them as spiritualks, and that we, at this point in time, cannot know for sure because the genre defies rigid definition. To attempt to "definitively" say that any given song is not a spiritual or based heavily upon one textually and melodically is, IMO, revisionist and anachronistic and to rely on fragmentary "evidence" as though it is the whole story.

But we know, from thread after thread, in every kind of folk subgenre I can think of, that even when someone has written in their diary, "I wrote such and such today," there is often an earlier influence, source, or fragment involved that comes to light later. This can happen innocently or not innocently... there are examples of artists who have put a song into the record in some way, and claimed royalty rights by attaching their name-- this was not the same terrible plagiarism we might think of today, but fairly relaxed practice in the dawn of the popular recording industry.

Again, my point is just that we can never be sure we have the whole story on a folk song-- that's part of what MAKES it a folk song! And that therefore, we can never be sure we have them all.

~Susan

Subject: RE: How much Folk Music is there?
From: joseph
Date: 19 Sep 07 - 07:40 AM

There is so many folk songs in Ireland alone That it would take me five lifetimes to learn them all. not vwith standing all the English,Scottish ,American,etc.It's nigh impossible to say how much there is.