Money v Folk

Subject: RE: Money v Folk
From: glueman
Date: 19 May 08 - 05:38 PM

Something I've noticed is the way 'serious' folkies talk about it in code, like it's a secret for the initiated, something regular people wouldn't understand, sending snide broadsides across anyone who isn't a believer. It's a musical form. You can play it on instruments, sing the words and buy the records from shops where they'll talk about little else for as long as you can bear it. It had a peculiar genesis but it's still music that people can like or lump it. I don't get the mystique, smoke and mirrors that go with it and I love folk, proper and improper.
If it costs a few quid to hear it because the landlord can rent the spare room to the railway modellers I won't bust a gut. Try watching professional football if you want to get shafted seeing something people do for nothing. Avoid Cambridge maybe, and folk is still one of the last great life enhancing bargains out there.

Subject: RE: Money v Folk
From: The Sandman
Date: 19 May 08 - 06:11 PM

All this may make you very happy - it pisses me off.
As I said, the older singers and musicians were there - we were not. Listen to them and you might - just - learn something.
Jim Carroll
no Jim It doesnt make me happy, its called change.
Please dont patronise me,I have listened to their singing a lot,and I have learned a lot.
listening to their singing is a different matter from accepting every statement a traditional singer, makes as being a pearl of wisdom.
here is an example,a good traditional fiddler once said to me in the old days, if we didnt have a top E string we used a bit of fishing line,and if we didnt have any rosin we used a bit of sugar.he dismissed with contempt the Piano[all its fit for is ding dong bell pussy in the well]never mind Beethoven or Josephine Keegan.
well sorry Jim,this guy was a good fiddler but there is no way I am going to put a fishing line on or use sugar,or dismiss the piano.
You still havent explained why cash is the ruination of the music,how did it ruin O Carolans music.
Margaret Barry,Julia Clifford ,Micheal Gorman were happy to play for cash,James Morrison was happy to teach for cash,how did financial reward ruin their music.
Finally,please do not insult my music by trying to imply I have never listened to traditional musicians/singers.Ihave listened long and hard ,I have also listened to what they say but I listen ,in the same way that I listen to anything else,rejecting that which is nonsense and accepting that which makes sense. Dick Miles

Subject: RE: Money v Folk
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 May 08 - 03:11 AM

Tom;
"Folk music is the product of a musical tradition that has been evolved through the process of oral transmission. The factors that shape the tradition are: (i) continuity which links the present with the past; (ii) variation which springs from the creative impulse of the individual or the group; and (iii) selection by the community, which determines the form or forms in which the music survives.
The term can be applied to music that has been evolved from rudimentary beginnings by a community uninfluenced by popular and art music and it can likewise be applied to music which has originated with an individual composer and has subsequently been absorbed into the unwritten living tradition of a community.
The term does not cover composed popular music that has been taken over ready-made by a community and remains unchanged, for it is the re-fashioning and re-creation of the music by the community that gives it its folk character."
What quarrel do you have with that - or what characteristics does your music have that will fit into that definition.
I could put up 'Some Conclusions' from which this was derived, and which fully covers (not always accurately) the sources of the songs and music - or the 16 page version from Funk and Wagnall's Standard Dictionary of Folklore - or A L Lloyd's reasonable effort to expand and bring up to date the definition in Folk Song in England', but as far as I'm concerned, the 1954 version is your starting point; ignore it and you have no case.
As we seem to be into analogies I've told Joe Heaney's story before, but it's a fair example of the double-think that seems to surround this subject.
"Once there was a Protestant who moved into a Catholic area, fell in love with a Catholic girl and wanted to marry her, but first had to ask the priest, who readily gave permission on the condition that he changed his religion.
One Friday, a week after the wedding the priest was cycling past the cottage when he caught the smell of frying bacon coming out of the window.
Knocked on the door and said, "don't you know us Catholics are forbidden to eat meat on a Friday?"
Your man replied, "Father, I can't do without meat every day - what shall I do?"
The priest replied, Each Friday you find the urge for meat coming on   
repeat to yourself "I'm a Catholic, I'm a Catholic, I'm a Catholic".
A month or so later, one Friday, the priest was going past the house again and, sure enough, the smell of frying bacon.
Furious, he jumps of his bike and storms into the house, to find your man sitting in front of a plate of bacon and cabbage saying, "You're a fish, you're a fish, you're a fish".
As I said at the beginning - flag of convenience.
The confusion surrounding what now passes for folk has been the cause of us losing many thousands of enthusiasts who were no longer prepared to sit through a 'folk' evenings without a 'folk' song being sung (such as the one a few years ago in the North of England that put on a night of Beatles songs).
The continuing 'Humpty Dumpty' attitude will probably mean that real songs will only survive between the covers of books or in sound archives - pity.
Cap'n,
Stop throwing your toys out of the pram - address the points I have made or go and talk to somebody else - I really don't have time for thas.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Money v Folk
From: GUEST,Tom Bliss
Date: 20 May 08 - 03:54 AM

I'm really sorry Jim, but I can't just go on repeating that I have no quarrel with the 54, and my music has no characteristics that will fit into that definition, and I have never once claimed that they have, nor ever will.

The 54 tin is still sealed, safe inside the Wiki larder. It just has 'trad' on the front now instead of 'folk.'

My music is in a DIFFERENT tin, also inside the Wiki larder, and it's labelled 'new story songs (about real or mythical events), and/or some 54 trad.'

Some other people decided, 40 years ago, to stick the word 'folk' on the front of the larder. So when I'm telling people where to find my tin I have to tell them to look behind the door marked 'folk.' I could keep my tin in the cleaning cupboard, of course, or under the stairs or in the garage, but I don't think it's really fair to expect me to. Soup tins live in larders.

I think you may have a wood/trees problem here.

Cheers

Tom

Subject: RE: Money v Folk
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 20 May 08 - 05:06 AM

As I said at the beginning - flag of convenience.

These days (my views have changed over the years I've posted here), I suspect you might be right. Were definitions based for examaple on the content of songs (sort of "meaningful words", "related to 'the people'", etc.) invented by a 60s contemporary singer-songwriter movement to justify their material as being "folk" and possibly even to provide themselves with an outlet for their music?

Whatever, "folk" has meant different things to different people for a long time and few are going to change their minds (and btw, some will say the term "folk" is "terminally screwed" and they might have a point) about what it is.

You can give your views for all your worth but your unlikely to achieve much other than attract labels such as "purist" and "folk police", etc. and so it goes on. The Internet has been littered with such debates probably since folk was first discussed on it, there never has been a general agreement and there never will be.

I'm not suggesting no-one should ever state what folk is to them but just to be aware of this mess we have with the term...

Subject: RE: Money v Folk
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 May 08 - 05:10 AM

Tom
Folk folk - I'll have to think about that!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Money v Folk
From: The Sandman
Date: 20 May 08 - 05:20 AM

Cap'n,
Stop throwing your toys out of the pram - address the points I have made or go and talk to somebody else - I really don't have time for thas.
Jim Carroll. sounds like the pot calling the kettle black.
For the last time[this is like talking to a brick wall] how has cash been the ruination of the music?
cash enables musicians to buy better instruments which allows them to perform better.
publicans have on occasions bought instruments[see Packie Russell Clare Gus OConnors pub.Ithink?],to be played in their pub,Isnt this a form of payment,ensuring that the session takes place in a particular pub,to the benefit of the publican who sells more beer.
I am sure this wasnt the publicans motive,but nevertheless more people would go to the bar because that was where the music was.http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=EBwTNaGGPBE

Subject: RE: Money v Folk
From: GUEST,Tom Bliss
Date: 20 May 08 - 05:35 AM

Flag of convenience might have been a reasonable criticism in the 60s when the change was happening, and you may well be right Jon. But I think it's more subtle than that.

As I say - I wasn't there. I was incarcerated in an English Public School, where anything other than classical music was banned.

But I suspect what may have happened was that there was a bunch of people - mainly in the US - who started out doing bona fide 54 folk songs (Dylan and Simon were of course hugely influenced by their exposure to the UK revival, as were MacColl and others over here), but then began to write their own material. They may have written songs before doing 54 folk, but this is how they were first perceived by the public - as 54-ish singers. They then merely retained that tag when they began making new works in - initially - a similar style. And of course they went on singing some trad material too (as most of us still do), so it wasn't a total deception. Lloyd was doing something much more 'complicated' at the same time, and he was a proper scholar.

So flag of convenience might be a bit unfair on the artists. I'd look to the music journalists, record companies, DJs and promoters if I looking for scapegoats - because marketing obviously did come into it, but basically this is just what happens to music and language and society in general.

To me RnB will always be fast ('jump') blues. But I wouldn't accuse Mariah Carey of flying a flag of convenience. The meaning of the word changed to include "any music that was made by and for black Americans" (though scholars might dispute that - how'd I know)!

And no-one would suggest that Carey was pretending to sound like Dr Feelgood.

Or would they?

Tom

Subject: RE: Money v Folk
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 May 08 - 01:11 PM

Cap'n,
Thank you for providing me with exactly the example I was talking about.
I don't know if you have ever visited Doolin; it's half an hours drive north of here.
When we first went there 'Doolin' it didn't exist as a town, it was a collection of small houses and a pub on Doolin Point; it was then called Fisherstreet,.
There were three noted musicians there, the Russell brothers, Packie (one of the finest concertina players in Ireland), Gussie (an excellent flute player) and Micho; they played regularly at O'Connor's pub with a couple of other locals; lovely music and a regular crowd of listeners.
Soon afterwards it began to attract tourists, who eventually arrived in droves armed with guitars, banjos, bodhrans, 12 string Kalashnikovs, spoons, kazoos – you name it they brought it. In a short time the locals were edged out and the visitors took over.
The last time we saw Packie he was sitting quietly in the corner with half a dozen pints bought by the visitors, plastered and not playing. He died shortly afterwards
When we last visited O'Connor's a few years ago, as we drew out of the car park a coach was pulling in, crammed with ten-gallon hats and 12 guitars.
It is now somewhat like lady's day at Ascot; a place to go to be seen and heard, certainly not to listen to good traditional music.
Doolin itself is a huge, sprawling theme park of hostels, holiday homes and visitors shops.
If this is what you have in mind for Irish music, or rural Ireland – please close the door as you leave.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Money v Folk
From: The Sandman
Date: 20 May 08 - 04:25 PM

Jim,Im not running the country unfortunately.
you give a one sided version of tourism.,I agree some of what you say is true,the other side of the coin is this,going back to the days when everyone[including musicians] had to leave Ireland to get work.
Ireland has very little productive industry,other than agriculture[and if Ireland votes yes in the lisbon treaty,Irelands Agriculture will go the same way as Irelands fishing],Tourism in Ireland is a twentieth century fact.,however it needs to be controlled,it cant be reversed.
in my area there are still unpaid sessions[that occur all the year round].
your one example, does not prove that cash has been the ruination of the music,it may have ruined o connors pub,but you are generalising from the particular.
thousands of Irish youngsters are learning to play irish music,some of them will end up playing for money,some of them will play purely for their own enjoyment,the main thing is that most of the time the music [In my experience]in my area is being played and played well,.
what is needed is a happy medium,we dont need the leprechauns gap,or plastic paddys,what we should be striving towards,is quality not quantity,to be able to play the music without compromising it.
I have been involved in organising The Ballydehob Jazz Festival,this brings people to Ballydehob,our artistic line up was not compromised,we had the following artists Joe Davidian,Sam Hudson Quartet, julia farino quartet includes Dave Moses]Willie Garnett.
Dan Moriyama Trio,Martin Vallely Quartet,and many more,without cash this would not have been possible.
Ballydehob also hosted a traditional festival which included EdelFox BobbyGardner,SeamusCreagh,Jackie Daly and many more,again without cash it would not be possible.
finally in my experience tourists are the most appreciative and polite audiences,listening attentively, and eager to know about history and regional styles etc. Dick Miles

Subject: RE: Money v Folk
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 May 08 - 07:44 AM

Cap'n
Thanks for the lesson in Irish history and economics - much appreciated.
You put up a reference to a page which illustrates for me where money has had a devastating effect on traditional music.
Of course, you might also have mentioned the folk boom of the sixties, the aftershocks of which are still showing up on our Richter Scale.
I am not arguing that nobody should make money from folk music (proper or ersatz) - I am saying that making money the main object of the exercise has damaged and will continue to damage the music. Put it in the hands of the businessmen (sorry Tom) and they will turn it into a product to be marketed and exploited.
Kennedy, by turning the fruits of his labours into a financially driven cottage industry undid much of the good achieved by the 1950s
collecting programme.
Anybody who has worked at collecting knows what a minefield it can become if money is part of the equation.
Make traditional music part of 'cutural tourism' in the way Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Eireann has in the past and it will be 'Darby O Gilled' as sure as the Pope's a Catholic.
The way that the original questioner set out his or her question is full of imponderables, but the main points for me are:
"Should anyone be making money out of Folk?" - no reason why not - with qualifications
"Would Folk survive without professional singers and musicians?" It would be a very sad state of affairs if it couldn't.
Do folkies want to have their music recognised by the general public. That's what it's been about for me from the year dot.
Folk music, in its proper sense, is, as the Topic set rightly puts it, "The Voice of The People". As well as being a wonderful entertainment it is a vital, and largely undocumented part of our cultural and social history; a voice of people who, it has always been assumed, have no voice. Squander it and you silence that voice.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Money v Folk
From: The Sandman
Date: 21 May 08 - 07:51 AM

Do folkies want to have their music recognised by the general public.
well as far as Iam concerned, yes,but with qualifications,I dont want any of my singing to be used for adverts,and I dont want to have to compromise my material,to be successful.

Subject: RE: Money v Folk
From: GUEST,Tom Bliss
Date: 21 May 08 - 08:44 AM

I agree with everything you say Jim, but i will quibble with one tiny word: 'is.'

You said "Folk music, in its proper sense, is, as the Topic set rightly puts it, "The Voice of The People."

I'd say 54 folk music WAS the voice of the people, and occasionally still is, but actually today pop music is the voice of the people.

I agree that it's a huge shame this has happened, and that our connection to our musical roots has been so damaged - but it has.

And I agree that it would be a great thing if we could somehow reconnect the 'people' (I hate that term, actually, who the heck isn't a person?) with that voice - for, yes, both cultural and entertainment reasons. But we're not going to do that by fretting over the influence of money in the past or in the present.

The bough has been cut. The limb severed. Yes there is life in it yet, but it lies on the ground largely detached from its roots. And yet we expect leaves and flowers - and nuts, and we're getting them.

So where is the sap coming from? It's coming from where it always has - a combination of enthusiastic amateurism and responsible professionalism.

If we want to graft this limb back into the tree we're going to have to use some artificial techniques - including promotion and marketing and professionalism and expertise and other things which may not have been a major part of the tradition, but which have always played their part, and are doing so particularly effectively at the moment - through the efforts of festival organisers, club organisers, arts funding bodies, teachers, record companies, magazine editors, AND artists - for all of whom money is important, (even if profit may not be to all).

Because most people who encounter 54 folk today do so as a direct result of some exercise in which trade plays some role. Many still do so from family or community, of course - and hopefully that percentage is growing - but I'd hazard that they are still a small minority.

If we don't take these steps, the limb could dry out and die.

If we do, and in the process stop using words like 'theft' and 'squander,' and 'exploitation,' and try instead to see money as sap, as blood, as adrenaline - then we may, with luck, in time see a healthy tree which can once again draw from its roots as it should, and did, and does in other countries.

But of course all your caveats stand too.

Tom

PS Without Kennedy's cottage industry we'd have lost the Channel Island tradition entirely. For ever.

Subject: RE: Money v Folk
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 May 08 - 10:21 AM

Tom,
I'm talking in historical terms - yes we lost our voice when the tradition disappeared, but no, it was not replaced by pop music.
Today we are passive recipients in our culture, our only say in the matter is to buy or not to by.
There is no way in which pop culture reflects our lives, it comes ready made and packaged - we take it or we leave it. There were suggestions at the time punk came into existence that this would be the new 'peoples' culture, but the market soon put a stop to that.
There have always been other forms of music alongside of folk culture - music-hall, classical etc., but the uniqueness of the folk tradition is that 'ordinary' people have had a part in its making, adapting and transmission.
If pop music is now 'our' voice, please explain where it reflects any aspects of out lives or work in they way say the sea songs, or the bothy songs, or the poaching songs did. And please explain what part we have in its creation
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Money v Folk
From: GUEST,Tom Bliss
Date: 21 May 08 - 10:26 AM

Ok Jim you win. I'm wrong! All the best - Tom

Subject: RE: Money v Folk
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 May 08 - 10:28 AM

PS
Kennedy was part of a team working on behalf of BBC and EFDSS.
It is usually forgotten that Bob Copper, Seamus Ennis, Sean O'Boyle and a number of others gathered the material which he later appropriated.
I would guess that in terms of the tradition, he probably lost us as much as he saved.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Money v Folk
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 May 08 - 11:38 AM

Ah Tom,
You're no fun anymore
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Money v Folk
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 21 May 08 - 12:44 PM

yes we lost our voice when the tradition disappeared, but no, it was not replaced by pop music.

Replaced no, but most of what "the people" absorb well enough to sing is pop music, or. at least I think so. Stop the clock now, take away recorded music, get "ordinary people" to try and sing a few songs they know together. Or maybe just try a karaoke night to find out what is in the (sort of) oral repertoire today.

Subject: RE: Money v Folk
From: glueman
Date: 21 May 08 - 12:50 PM

More or less wrote what Jon said before the elctro-mechanical brain dropped the line and lost it. Punk was as participatory as folk in its own way and matched it for anti-establishment fervour and simplicity.
I'm caught in the middle - miss the old farmer's pubs of the 70s where singalongs of traditional stuff would just begin unprompted - but see folk revival as the bourgeois, genteel activity it has become.

Subject: RE: Money v Folk
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 22 May 08 - 03:12 AM

Jon,
I have no argument with the statement that today people will listen to, and occasionally sing their way though the pop songs; this hasn't replaced the folk repertoire, it's always been there.
Walter Pardon, with his large repertoire of traditional songs and ballads, was among the most important traditional singers of the twentieth century, yet he could easily match those with music hall songs, Victorian parlour ballads and early pop songs. If you asked him about the different types of songs in his repertoire, he was quite adamant – some were 'folk songs' (his words) some weren't. His analysis of which was which was, in my opinion, quite accurate, both when he spoke into our tape recorded, and as early as 1948, when he began to write down his families songs in notebooks and listed them in categories. .
Mary Delaney, a blind Irish Travelling woman, gave us around 100 traditional songs, and would have doubled that number if we hadn't lost touch when she moved out of London. She could have doubled that number again with Country and Western songs, but she persistently refused, telling us that "those aren't the ones you are looking for".   
She told us (on tape) that "the new songs have the old ones ruined"; she "only sang them 'cause that's what the lads ask for down the pub" (again on tape).
Kerry Traveller Mikeen McCarthy gave us around 60 songs, mostly traditional, with a few early pop songs of the sentimental Irish type thrown in. He said he'd never thought about whether there was a difference between the types of song, but when we tried him on it, he had pictures in his mind when he sang his folk songs, "it's like sitting in the cinema" – he never got this with his pop songs.
Walter Pardon filled tapes with descriptions of the characters in his songs, and of the locations they were set in, and of the different 'feel' his songs had – "The Pretty Ploughboy is always ploughing in the field over there" (opposite his house).
We have dozens of examples of this type of identification; from Norfolk, from Travellers and from the West of Ireland.
People who want to sing for entertainment will take whatever is there; it's my opinion that the folk songs went far beyond that – and it's that we've lost.
Mary Delaney sang us a ballad she called 'Buried In Kilkenny', a superb version of the Child ballad 'Lord Randall'; she always made a good job of it, but because she didn't get to sing her folk stuff regularly she tended to overpitch and her concentration was on getting it right technically.
She had a large family of 16 children; when we met her a number of them were at school age, but hadn't been to school because of her itinerant life style.
When she was travelling round East London she decided to try and educate them, so she moved into a council flat in Hackney in order to send them to the local school. I have never known anybody so miserable – she hated every second of it. Completely blind, she was alone all day, devastatingly lonely; the only visitors she got were us, and the occasional Traveller friend who dropped in to see her (Travellers still on the road hate houses, and will only stay in them for as short time as possible).
One night we went to see her with a tape recorder and asked her to sing 'Lord Randal', which she did. It was electric – all the misery and loneliness and loss of her natural lifestyle was poured into the song; she was virtually in tears, and so were we.
If you can tell me that you can get the same level of emotional involvement from singing 'Oobla Dee, Oobla Dah', or 'Yellow Submarine' down at the pub, I'm willing to listen, but I'll take some convincing.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Money v Folk
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 22 May 08 - 04:37 AM

Jim, the repertoire is still there and always will be but I think its only a small minority who know any of it. I think it's the same with more modern "folk" songs. No Man's Land for example is probably known by all who go to any type of folk club but it wouldn't be known by anyone I know who doesn't go to a folk club.

I'm not sure how you would quantify "emotional involvement" but a few years back I was involved in what I will call an "accoustic pub thrash" (I wouldn't insult terms like "session"). We played tunes mostly but there were some songs including Yellow Submarine, I Saw Her Standing There and Wonderwall. On a good night, people would join in with those ones.

Throw in "Caliope House" amongst a tune set in that sort of pub group and you might find some more interest as a good few know it - it followed on from A Man Is In Love by The Waterboys. Dirty Old Town will probably be known - Pogues did it...

Anyway, I'm just trying to give a picture of how I (perhaps wrongly) think thinks are, not pass judgement on quality or degrees of pleasure one may get (but I will say although I'm English and live in England, my first love is the Irish session - for me there is nothing better than getting together with a others and playing the music).