Music of the people..Don't make me laugh

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: theleveller
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 08:43 AM

So when was the last folk song written, Jim? If it's no longer happening, there must be a finite date when it stopped.

I agree that folk is not a style, but I disagree that folk songs are not still being written. They are the songs that people write about their everyday lives - for instance, I mentioned Ray Hearne earlier. The songs he writes about the steel and coal industries of South Yorkshire that he worked in and the impact that their closure has had on the local communities are, to my mind, definitely folk songs. Still, I don't suppose we'll ever agree on that.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Stower
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 10:20 AM

Jim Carroll 10 Nov 09 - 07:34 AM
"Are you saying that there are no folk songs being written nowadays"
That's about it really - folk is a process, not a style of writing.
'The people' in the sense I believe the the op means, no longer are pat of their cultre, just passive recipients of it.

I've sometimes wondered about this (and sorry for the thread drift here). I'm really not trying to be funny or perverse when I say this, but if 'Yesterday', 'Eleanor Rigby', even 'The Birdie Song' for Chrissakes, are known by a huge number of the population, sung at karaokes and joined in by the whole room, everyone knows it and no one cares who wrote it, does that now make them folk songs? I'm struggling to see the difference between this and the ballad mongers of old wriitng their songs and selling their wares, which then, if they were lucky, became popular songs passed down the generations (as the songs I have mentioned have been). The only change I can see is different times, different technology. The process seems the same.

Sorry. I'll go away now.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: GUEST,Steamin' Willie
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 10:25 AM

I remember years ago at a festival, Dave Burland sang (for the first time) I Don't Like Mondays, the Boomtown Rats song that happened to be in the charts at the time.

A true folk song, he said. I agree. It described an event that happened, stirred emotions about the event and commented on the futility of peoples' actions.

Take that where you will. Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple, an excellent folk song. Even noted that Frank Zappa had been playing at the hall the night it burned down. Woodstock is self explanatory, and Anarchy in The UK was Johnny Rotten's vivd folk song about the state of British society. Most people now realise what a fine folk singer / songwriter Bruce Springsteen is, and many "blue collar" workers in the USA will feel an affinity with his songs. (Harry Chapin certainly did.)

So, peoples' music? Teachers' music? Miners' music?

Isn't every song or piece of music Folk Music?

Or does it have to entail beer, beards and three chords?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 10:54 AM

"Isn't every song or piece of music Folk Music?"

Oh for gods sake we are going to be back to that fucking horse in a minute! Of course it isn't — any more than Swan Lake is a folk dance or War & Peace a folk tale. Please don't let us get off on THAT dreary road again...

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: GUEST,Steamin' Willie
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 10:57 AM

Fully agree.

But can't think of a better way to conclude!

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Mr Happy
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 10:57 AM

Music is music is music!!

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: theleveller
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 11:11 AM

I don't think it's thread drift. If there are no more folk songs being written then you can't say that folk music IS the music of the people, just that folk music WAS the music of the people. Today, presumably, the music of the people is........?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Mr Happy
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 11:13 AM

Which people?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 11:17 AM

"Music is music is music!"

& bullshit is bullshit is bullshit - & bollox is bollox is bollox - & how much further on has THAT o-so-valuable insight got us then!

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Tim Leaning
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 11:48 AM

I wonder if there is anything on the telly tonight?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 11:53 AM

Yes a bowl of fruit and a picture of my granny.

Dave H

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 11:57 AM

"So when was the last folk song written, Jim?"
No idea - the last identifiable community to make songs which were taken up and remade was the Travellers (all sorts of explainable reasons).
We started recording Irish Travellers in 1973 when they still had a fairly thriving tradition - by 1975 (18 months later) that tradition had disappeared - reason - they'd all gone out and bought portable televisions and the singers and storytellers lost their audiences, virtually overnight.
"Music is music is music!!"
Just as soup is soup is soup - personally I prefer mushroom, just as I prefer folk.
"Please don't let us get off on THAT dreary road again..."
Sorry Mike, it wasn't my intention to open this particular can of worms, but it is (as far as I am concerned) inseperable from this (and many other) questions connected with folk music.
"Today, presumably, the music of the people is........?"
The 'people' at one time made songs - again, for all sorts of reasons; now they don't (they all went out and bought televisions too).
People's music implies not just a passive acceptance, but an active part in ts making and transmission - it doesn't happen now - or does it?
They listen to light classical, middle of the road, pop (in all its manifestations)..... If you go into a South Wales ex (thanks to Mrs T) mining village you'll find (ex) miners choirs singing Verdi, Gounod, Gluck, Schubert, Brahms..... folk???? I think not.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 12:13 PM

Jim - My 'DREARY road" plea was addressed to Steamin' Willie, not to you. Can't find anything you've said above I would take any issue with.

As I have remarked so oft, the value to me of folksong, tales, &c, is that they are all that has been salvaged from the terrible waste of talent there must have been when talented people, [which there always would have been in every part of society] had not other outlets for their creative impulses due to lack of education or opportunity. In a way, therefore, it seems to me that true folk artefacts will not have long survived the onset of universal education [except, as you rightly point out, in enclaves like Travellers who might well have missed out], because then the talented among 'the people' (& you know what I mean) had the opportunity to find outlets which had previously been closed to them. Don't know how valid this view may be; but it is always the explanation I offer to those who want some rationale for my unreserved love for the traditional.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: theleveller
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 12:20 PM

"Yes a bowl of fruit and a picture of my granny."

Wow, it must be a very old telly. I'll bet it knows some good folk songs ;)

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 05:17 PM

bothie songs originated with the Aberdeenshire farm-workers, that the forbitters came from the experiences of sailors who sailed before the mast, that the songs of the cotton industry came from mill workers…… etc. The fact that the songs reflect the lives and experiences of the people who sang them as accurately as they do pretty well confirms this – for me anyway. The clincher is the fact that the folk repertoire is almost entirely anonymous and the product of many rather than single composers, therefore, if Bert Lloyd was right, too poor to be acknowleged.

Jim,
Do you still really believe this stuff? Yes, I'll grant the Bothy songs, some of them at least, but the vast majority of what we call folk songs were at the outset commercial products made up by beoadside hacks, song writers in the theatres, supper rooms, pleasure gardens, music halls. Give me an example of a forebitter made up by a sailor!

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 05:55 PM

Getting back to the (equally dreary old) class thing again. I came from a working class family and when I aspired to an education middle class teachers told me that I was getting above my station. A few years down the line, when I had acquired my education, middle class 'socialist' teachers accused me of being 'middle class'! This experience caused me to take this class thing with a pinch of salt and led me to conclude that some teachers are very insecure people who feel the need to exclude others. Personally, I think that in society there are workers, unemployed workers and bosses - and the bosses are not to be trusted.

My message to teachers who want to exclude me, for whatever reason, is f*ck off - I no longer give a sh*t about what you think of me!

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: GUEST,Ernest W.
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 07:12 PM

Jim Carroll wrote:
'Yes, they [the source singers] most certainly did [distinguish between 'traditional' and 'commercial' songs in their repertoire] - this has been argued ad nauseum elsewhere and apparently remains one of the great myths that haunt this subject. I would be interested to learn on what evidence people who make this claim base it on.'

Even if this were the case - i.e. that recreational singers in rural areas divided their songs into 'the old/orally transmitted ones' and those of more obviously recent (theatre/music hall, then gramophone/radio) provenance - clearly the majority ended up preferring the latter, or the oral tradition would not have died out.

It is interesting that the purist wing that emerged from the 60s revival and saw itself as reacting against the supposed middle-class insensitivity of Cecil Sharp - I'm thinking of people like Reg Hall and everyone involved with the Musical Traditions magazine/label - continue to reproduce his romantic notion of a 'tradition' untouched by interactions with a commercial entertainment industry, even though such a thing had begun to come into existence at least as early as the 17th century. Dave Harker, whatever one might think of his critical Marxist angle, did some persuasive research on this subject.

As Steve Gardham points out a couple of posts above, far from all being improvised by farm labourers in their spare hours, many of what are now considered 'traditional' songs had origins as printed broadsides. In fact, what strikes me when listening to CDs in the Hall-curated Voice of the People series is how few of the songs recorded correspond to the Child/Sharp/Vaughan Williams ideal of folk songs. Looking at the texts, there's a lot of doggerel that smacks more of the street ballad than the neater or slightly more 'poetic' lyrics (supposedly polished by the unconscious literary instinct of the 'folk') favoured by the collectors and the latter-day folk musicians (M. Carthy et al) who worked from the Penguin Book.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 09:37 PM

I think it will be relevant here to quote, as I have done on a previous thread, what I wrote on this subject (re Mrs Hogg & Sir Walter Scott) in my article on Folklore in the Continuum Encyclopedia of British Literature [NY 2003] —

'"They were made for singin' and no for readin', but ye hae broken the charm now, and they'll never be sung mair." Her words have been called prophetic, but the resultant decline in living folklore was probably a factor of the same influences that led to the folkloric researches of Scott and others in the first place — awareness that urbanization and the spread of easily accessible forms of popular entertainment (pleasure gardens, music-hall; later, radio, cinema, television, recording) were undermining those popular roots on which the uninhibited spread of living folklore depends, and a consequent desire to preserve what could be saved before it vanished entirely. Although the folk forms have turned out tougher than this pessimistic view suggested, it is true that, from the invention of printing onward, every technological and popular artistic development had tended to fix the form. Mrs Hogg, alas, was too late.'

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Tim Leaning
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 10:20 PM

"As I have remarked so oft, the value to me of folksong, tales, &c, is that they are all that has been salvaged from the terrible waste of talent there must have been when talented people, [which there always would have been in every part of society] had not other outlets for their creative impulses due to lack of education or opportunity."
MtheGM
That does read(to me) as if you think the folksong ,tales etc you value are
second rate because the people that originated and developed them were not educated and didn't have other outlets for their talent.
Is that what you meant?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 11:38 PM

No, Tim Leaning — on the contrary, I think they manifest an extraordinary talent — often unsophisticated [as I have often also said, I greatly value the way that traditional lyrics have a marvellous knack of teetering on the very edge of doggerel but never quite tumbling in {think e.g. of the marvellous exchange between Willie & his brother who just happened to be standing on the shore at 1 o'clock in the morning as Willie fell off his horse into Clydewater in Child#216 — quite absurd as Child points out, but how superbly effective}]; but with a wonderful, unique sort of sensitivity and exquisiteness of their own. But 'unsophisticated' by no means means 'second-rate', but different in kind from the more polished creations acceptable in more refined circles. It is surely this distinctiveness of tone and approach which all of us who so love them value so much. Is that not how you see and 'feel' them also? If not, what do you appreciate about them and think makes them different from other types of creativity?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 11:45 PM

Does the profession or social status of the singer change the song?

DeG

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Nov 09 - 12:16 AM

D e G - Not clear whether you mean of the original singer, or of the modern folk interpreter who sings them now? Please clarify the point of your question.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Nov 09 - 04:46 AM

"Do you still really believe this stuff?.......
Absolutely Steve - for the reasons I have given - vernacular, familiarity.. etc, also, how the songs sit within the tradition, and the proprietorial attitude adopted by the singers towards their songs.
"Give me an example of a forebitter made up by a sailor!"
I will happily Steve, if you, or anybody can produce anything like convincing proof of the authorship of our traditional songs - broadside printers or otherwise (other than a "gut feeling".)
Do your really believe that a Seven Dials denizen could produce anything as authentic as 'Round Cape Horn' or Harry Cox's 'Van Dieman's Land'?
This area of West Clare has not only been a gold mine for traditional songs, but also it has been an extremely active song-writing area, particularly in the early years of the 20th century. We have folders of locally made traditional songs (or traditional songs in the making) on subjects like the Irish War of Independance, fashions, fishing disasters, sprees, The West Clare Railway (4 songs on that), the singing of the French ship, The Leon XIII, musicians, emigration (dozens).... - all obviously locally produced - and nearly all anonymous - though they must have been made within the lifetimes of the singers we met (and got some of them from). Can you come up with anything approaching that?   
I'll show you mine Steve if you show me yours!
"I would be interested to learn on what evidence people who make this claim base it on."
Would thirty odd years of interviewing source singers do, Ernest?
The results of this can be found in our collection in The British Library, but you might like to read what Walter Pardon and others have to say on the subject in my reply to Mike Yates' 'The Other Songs', making a similar point to your own ('By Any Other Name' - Enthusiasms section, Musical Traditions (can't remember the date).
I really do get a little tired of our traditional singers being regarded as merely sources for songs and not the sentient human beings they most certainly where - If I can tell the difference between 'Knock 'Em In The Old Kent Road' and 'Tiftie's Annie' why on earth shouldn't they be able to????
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Brian Peters
Date: 11 Nov 09 - 05:25 AM

Ernest W. wrote:
"Even if this were the case - i.e. that recreational singers in rural areas divided their songs into 'the old/orally transmitted ones' and those of more obviously recent (theatre/music hall, then gramophone/radio) provenance - clearly the majority ended up preferring the latter, or the oral tradition would not have died out."

I thought that the oral tradition died out because people simply stopped singing, not because they substituted more recent material for the older stuff. Many of the singers we know of from the 1950s and 60s had repertoires including both, but that was pretty much the last gasp of widespread recreational singing, a few surviving outposts notwithstanding.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 Nov 09 - 07:53 AM

this thread reminds me of going round and round the circle line on the london underground.
all we need is Betjemans poem about the man lost in kentish town underground

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Mr Happy
Date: 11 Nov 09 - 08:16 AM

.........is that the one that goes:

'he never returned & his fate is still unlearned'?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Tim Leaning
Date: 11 Nov 09 - 08:40 AM

"Is that not how you see and 'feel' them also? If not, what do you appreciate about them and think makes them different from other types of creativity?"

I don't study this,or any other subject for that matter.
I hear the older songs when I am lucky enough to be at avenue and someone else chooses to sing them.
I find that as with all other music/songs I enjoy the emotion that they bring,whatever that may be sadness,joy or disgust.
If they scan and hang together and sound right I enjoy them.
I don't think that the performance is as important as that but I do appreciate the performance whether it is a fine professional one or a loud drunken one.
Sometimes I need them explaining to me,well the parts that are of their time and not common knowledge today.
And I appreciate the knowledge that people who do take the time to study can impart.
I don't however think they are more important than any other form opf music or song.
I think a good song is a good song is a good song etc .
Thanks for clearing up what it was you had meant in your previous post as it did seem to run against what I had previously thought your POV was.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 11 Nov 09 - 09:47 AM

D e G - Not clear whether you mean of the original singer, or of the modern folk interpreter who sings them now? Please clarify the point of your question.

Sorry - I was a bit vague. I am just asking if the status of the singer changes the intrinsic value of the song, it's message or it's meaning. I know that the singer can change it tonaly etc. but I don't think that has anything to do with profession either does it?

DeG

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 Nov 09 - 09:58 AM

I really do get a little tired of our traditional singers being regarded as merely sources for songs and not the sentient human beings they most certainly where - If I can tell the difference between 'Knock 'Em In The Old Kent Road' and 'Tiftie's Annie' why on earth shouldn't they be able to????
Jim Carroll
yes,Jim but they sang them both
furthermore some of the more recent traditional singers[I dont mean Walter Pardon,he was a very good singer] have sung all sorts of material and some of it was not well sung,but because they have a certain label they are revered,regardless of their singing abilty.
why should I choose to listen to In these hard times[music hall song]being sung by a traditional singer NOT VERY WELL,whenIcan hear RoyBailey singing it better.
If a traditional singer like Bob Lewis[who is a good singer]sings a song well,I listen,the same applies to a good revival singer.
I am not prepared to listen to a mediocre traditional singer singing a music hall song just because he has been labelled traditional, if there is a better revival singer,doing a better job,thats the version I listen to .

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Nov 09 - 10:34 AM

Sorry Cap'n
Personally I'm not fond of of Roy Bailey and would prefer to hear the singing of even the less talented of our traditional singers - but that's probably me being bloody-minded.
We've argued this before, but I totally refuse to judge a singer from, say Knapton, Winterton, Potter Heigham, Miltown Malbay, The Gower Peninsular - wherever... with the same yardstick I would use to judge a revival singer used to singing regularly in a folk club. For me, most of our source singers bring a depth to the songs that I find sadly lacking in all but a tiny handful of revival singers, and it is this which is the essence of traditional singing, But again, that's me (and you know how I feel about Comhaltas and its bloody kiss-of-death competitions!
I don't expect reverence, just a recognition that our traditional singers occupied a diffent world - and maybe the occasional bit of gratitude for the gift they've given us.
But this isn't about personal taste - it's about whether our singers are capable of differentiation. I believe, based on our experiance, they most certainly are, and it's somewhat patronising to suggest otherwise.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Nov 09 - 10:39 AM

PS I meant to say (again) if anybody was to leaf through our record collection - as well as our collection of traditional material, you would also find Sinatra, Count John, Peggy Lee, Callas, Broonzy.... and a host of others. I listen to them all - doesn't mean to say I can't tell that they come from a different stable!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 Nov 09 - 11:16 AM

iam not arguing whether or not they come from a different stable,but I am saying there are good revival singers and good traditional singers and there are also mediocre traditional singers.,and that when i choose to listen to music for enjoyment,its based on a qualitative judgement,if I listen to learn a particular song my criteria might be different.
that does not mean I dont appreciate them as song carriers,but that is a different appreciation
when I make a judgement about singing,I do it based on their singing not on how they are labelled.
for example I like Harry Cox,but not Gordon Hall[both traditional singers],I also like Bob Blake[even though he was not a traditional singer].
I also like the revival singer Ron Taylor.
yes some traditional may have differentiated, but most good performers[and that includes some traditional ones] know there are songs suitable for different situations,Sam Larner knew perfectly well when to sing a certain kind of song and was a consummate perform,or do you disagree?
so if some traditional singers were good performers[knowing how to work an audience],why should we use a different yardstick?
why should we make excuses for mediocre traditional singers,I agree they may be worth listening to if they have an interesting repertoire,but that does not mean they are all necessarily good interpreters,most are but not all
I dont think it is as black and white as you make out,
and personally Iam not prepared to sit in revernce listening to a traditional singer giving a poor performance of a music hall songor amodern song,just because he is labelled a traditional singer,this same singer might give an excellent rendition of a traditional song:
why, because as a performer he values one more than the other,but that can apply to any performer revival or traditional

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Stringsinger
Date: 11 Nov 09 - 11:31 AM

I think that there are working class people who appreciate folk music and identify with it.
When it was appropriated by the Left Wing in the forties under Browder, it was more of
a self-conscious effort by people who really appreciated folk music to make it music of the people. In those days, Benny Goodman was more music of the people in the cities. Bob Wills in Texas.

Just because folk music isn't hugely popular doesn't mean that it isn't working-class or music of "the people". What people? So much is controlled by the media these days that what is popular is being manipulated by music merchants and those in the cultural seats of power.

The idea that popular music is the music of the people is analogous to the idea of the "tyranny of democracy" that was so trumped up by right-wing ideologues. Popular music is a business. Folk music in its intent is not.

It exists as a music of the people, maybe not the people the author of this thread has in mind.

Frank

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Nov 09 - 12:49 PM

Cap'n,
I'm not making out anything - I have no more right to argue against your taste, than you have mine - this is not about preference, good, bad or whatever, it is about where our songs came from and whether they are 'The Music of The People'.
We can choose to learn or songs from Ron Taylor (who got his songs from traditional singers - directly or indirectly) or Peter Bellamy (who got his songs from traditional singers i or i) or Martin Carthy (who got his....) or whoever you care to mention who sings folk songs - the point being that without our traditional singers we wouldn't have any traditional songs - for this they have my eternal gratitude and I hope, yours .
Everything else is a matter of personal taste.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 Nov 09 - 12:56 PM

of course, Jim .

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: GUEST,Steamin' Willie
Date: 11 Nov 09 - 01:00 PM

I suppose that if you strip away the heritage (subject matter, origins of tune etc) you are left with a style. Granted, a style that is at the very least a broad church! I was in a ceilidh band, tried serious "contemporary" style as a singer / songwriter and also got into comedy as part of a double act. All these were welcome at (most) folk clubs.

However, a style is a style. Perhaps that, rather than the subject and history is what most people recognise as folk music? I could go further and say those who say they like folk music may recognise the style more than those who don't.

I remember as a teenager, I was also in a rock band. Our drummer said he could not understand my fascination with folk music and that he would have problems listening, no matter how hard he tried.

His record collection, as I recall, included some Fairport Convention and Dylan to date. he also reckoned Gerry Rafferty's "Her father didn't like me anyway" was one of the best songs ever written.

There rests the case for the bemused.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 11 Nov 09 - 03:21 PM

Do you still really believe this stuff?.......
Absolutely Steve - for the reasons I have given - vernacular, familiarity.. etc, also, how the songs sit within the tradition, and the proprietorial attitude adopted by the singers towards their songs.

Jim,
I'm not questioning the 'ownership' of the songs by the people who we recorded them from. I am simply referring to their origins. Like you I spent years collecting in the field in the 60s and 70s. I then got so interested in the songs, and my natural curiosity led me to wonder where they came from and how they evolved. This then led me into lengthy research into broadsides, art music and the Music Hall. It eventually became obvious to me that the vast majority (by no means all) of the songs we recorded, in England at least, were the product of commercial interests such as broadside hacks/printers, and the pop scene of any given period. For example all of those hunting songs not about a specific day's hunting, songs with varying amounts of description of the weather and the countryside 'When Spring comes in tra la', Colins, Phoebes, etc were products of the pleasure gardens of the late 18thc and various theatrical productions. Even a substantial number of the, highly worshipped in some quarters, Child Ballads originated on broadsides. Many actually got no further than broadsides (Robin Hood ballads for instance)

As for the differentiation argument. In my experience most of the singers I recorded did not differentiate between different genres of song. I put this down largely to the fact that very few of them were actual 'performers' or had been employed to sing at any point in their lives. However the famous traditional singer, Arthur Howard, had at least 4 separate repertoires which had little overlap and he used each repertoire separately depending on some of his very different audiences, folk clubs, old people's homes, hunt suppers, etc.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 03:38 AM

'Peter Bellamy (who got his songs from traditional singers *i or i*) or Martin Carthy (who got his....) or whoever you care to mention who sings folk songs -'

Jim: Not quite sure what you mean by 'i or i' relative to the sources of Pete B's songs - could you clarify this for me, please? Michael

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: GUEST,Spleen Cringe
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 03:46 AM

Walter Pardon?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 04:19 AM

It is the agenda of The Revival that has given us Folk Music, not the so-called source singers who merely provided them with the sort of songs they were interested in. We might think of this bias as an unnatural sort of selection and lament that the broader cultural context of Traditional Song has been all but lost to us. Did anyone, for example, think to collect more popular / music hall / parlour songs from the repertoires of the old singers and determine to what extent that they too had been effected by the folk process?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 04:38 AM

Steve,
The fact is that neither of us have one iota of proof on whether the songs originated on the broadsides or in the minds and mouths of 'the people' - it is a matter of opinion - and because of this I believe it would be presumptuous of either of us to make definitive statements without providing evidence to back up our claims.
Since you first raised the point some time ago I re-visited some of our books on the broadside trade (the Catnach and Pitts bios., Roxborough and Bagford collections... Shepherd, Collinson et al,). There is no proof one way or the other - or if there is, could you point it out. It seems to be totally a matter of speculation. I would not deny for one minute the possibility that some of our our songs and ballads MAY have started life on the broadside presses, but without adding to my present knowledge it would be extremely arrogant of me to say how many or which.
If you are prepared to concede that the bothie songs came from the Aberdeenshire farmworkers, why are you not prepared to accept that the sea songs came from working sailors, that rural songs came from rural dwellers......... what makes the bothie workers so special?
I have given you an example of a rural community in West Clare which not only had a large repertoire of traditional songs, but also had a tradition of making songs using the old forms. This was also the case with the Travellers - they continued to make songs right up to the point where their singing tradition died (some of them as short as 2/3 verse pieces, others extending into 7-8-9 verses).
In 1975 we started recording a Kerry Traveller named Mikeen McCarthy. In the 1940s he and his mother participated in what was the dying gasp of the broadside trade here in Ireland - ballad selling around the fairs and markets in the rural south west. He described to us in detail how those 'ballads' were selected and produced.
At the risk of making this an epic of this posting, this is how one of the many discussions we had with him went.

J C.       Where did you sell mainly, where did you sell your songs?
M Mc.    Fair days now, inside the pubs.
J C.       In Kerry, or would you travel out as well?
M Mc. Oh, I'd travel away too, Kerry, Clare, all over, wherever there'd be fairs, anywhere you'd go when the fellers'd be half steamed in the pubs, 'tis then they'd start buying them.   
J C.      You say your mother would sell them as well?
M Mc   Well she'd never hardly sell the songs that she wouldn't know, because she couldn't read, you see. But she'd sell the songs she used to know.
J C    How would she get them written out, would she get somebody who could write to do it?
M Mc   Yeah, the printing office we used to go to now, he knew us that well he'd have them all ready wrote out, so she'd want a gross of those songs, that's twelve dozen, twelve dozen of the next songs he knew her well like; "now Jane, I've The Wild Colonial Boy", for instance or "The Blind Beggar", we'll say, all those songs, "I've all those in print now".   They'd all be laid out on the counter then in all different colours, there'd be kind of pink, orange colour, yellow, and white, all that, you know, and they'd be all in bundles like. Well you'd pick and chose them, whichever one you want, about threepence a dozen I think that time, fourpence more times.
J C    How many would you sell of each song, what would be a good sale?
M Mc   Well, 'twould be a long day's selling like, and if it would be a big fair, if I sold say two or three dozen of each song, you should sell at least a gross anyway, like, twelve dozen.
You'd go into a pub, only you'd have the ballads in your hand, just walk over to the group and you'd say, "would you like to buy some songs, some ballads".    They'd start looking at them then.    Well they'd take them all away, they'd start reading them all then and picking them out and they'd ask you then, "could you sing that one for us, could we know the air of it".    "Yeah", I'd say; I'd sing it then. They'd buy me a bottle of lemonade or something and I'd sit down and I'd sing it and then I often had to sing it maybe two or three times 'cause there'd be some girl maybe or some boy interested in it.    Then they'd want to get into the air of it like.
J C.         So you did in fact teach them the air.
M Mc.   Yeah, you'd have to teach them the air and they'd have to go over the ballad then again and maybe I'd have to sing it again with them, you know, but they wouldn't want your time for nothing, oh, they'd pay you very well, whatever you'd want to eat, or something like that, inside in the pub.   'Tis like the records now, it reminds me of the same thing Jim. You'd get a hit ballad, so I'd get that in print straight away then. But 'twould just travel through our parish or through a town, from one town to another, and fair to another and you'd get the new ballad come out and you'd sell twenty times as much of that ballad as you would of the rest of them, when they come out new like.   The Blind Beggar sold very well now, that one. All those songs now, The Wild Colonian Boy; several songs like that now.
J C.    What would you say was the oldest song that went onto a ballad that you know?
M Mc.   Oh, The Blind Beggar, I'd say, I'd say that was the oldest.

He selected song from everywhere, but one of the main sources was from his father's repertoire of traditional songs, sometimes by request,

"Do you have any of your father's songs? -
"Not today, but I'll have some next time".

None of this, of course, is solid proof, but it is an indication of how the songs were transmited.
Incidentally, I believe a couple of The Robin Hood Ballads did pass into the tradition.
Regarding your Arthur Howard observations(would be interested to hear how you approached the subject).
With both the Travellers and here in West Clare, we were working in a situation were the singing tradition was either still a living one or only recently dead.
The situation in the UK was very different, traditional singing having been swamped by the popular songs of the day some time in the early part of the 20th century.
Walter Pardon described how he was the only one of his age group, in his family, to take an interest in the old songs - the others having opted for the new ones. Walter had some fascinatoing things to say on how he differentiated, as I'm sure you know.
Mike:
sorry - a slip of the mind (i or i) should have read (d or i) - directly or indirectly; from traditional singers recordings or via books.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 06:47 AM

"Did anyone, for example, think to collect more popular / music hall / parlour songs from the repertoires of the old singers and determine to what extent that they too had been effected by the folk process? "
Yes
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 06:52 AM

And?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 07:25 AM

I assume you'd have been very pissed off if you'd have gone to a Pavarotti recital and he hadn't sug Que Sera Sera - or are folk venues the only ones that are used as rubbish dumps for all types of music?
"And?"
Read what I and others have written on the subject for yourself - I don't wipe bums and change nappies.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 07:47 AM

SO'P
Sorry 'bout that - too early in the morning.
Am not prepared to enter into a long pointless dialogue with someone who makes sweeping statements and refuses to provide any back-up to them, but, briefly - we found that the commercial songs learned from the radio or records tended not to change to any noticable degree; and rather were treated as sacrosanct (not counting parodies, of course).
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: The Sandman
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 07:51 AM

very intersting Jim, thankyou.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: M.Ted
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 08:00 AM

Jim Carroll--that bit of your talk with Mikeen McCarthy was pure gold--thank you for sharing it.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 09:47 AM

Read what I and others have written on the subject for yourself - I don't wipe bums and change nappies.

I guess you have a nurse to do that sort of thing for you these days. Sorry for rattling your cage, old man - it won't happen again.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 10:48 AM

Jim,
We seem to be saying the same thing. I'm well aware the situation with travellers is very different and that in parts of Ireland until recently there was a strong LOCAL tradition of song writing, having read the likes of Glassy, Sam Henry, John Moulden, Hugh Shields etc.

I had assumed we were referring largely to the corpus of traditional songs common to the British isles, North America and a few other English-speaking parts of the world. I'm also very aware that the process between oral tradition and print was a two-way affair in some cases. The broadside printers, or their hacks, were very commercially motivated (as were your travellers described above I might add)and if a song was popular, as Mikeen said, it soon found its way BACK to the presses. Having studied and compared many many texts I am still convinced that the vast majority started out as commercial pieces with a view to a sale.

Of course we can't name the vast majority of the authors. Nobody cared who wrote them and they only got a few pence for writing them, by the 18thc.
However I could write you a list if you wish of those that purport to have authors.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 12:45 PM

Steve,
I am referring to "the corpus of traditional songs common to the British isles, North America and a few other English-speaking parts of the world."
We have no evidence whatsoever that the songs originated from the broadside presses, let alone made their way back to them - or if we have I am unaware of it.
There have been various claims down the centuries of authorship of , say Barbara Allen (about a century after Pepys referred to it as "That old Scotch song), but I believe these to be spurious - totally lacking evidence.
I was fascinated by Bronson's essay on the ballad Edward, though the only thing it convinced me of was that you should stick at what you are good at.
If you are prepared to concede that the bothie workers produced their own songs, why not the sailors, farm labourers, mill workers.... and the rest of them.
You are right we can't name the vast majority of authors - so on what do you base your claim that they originated as broadsides?
I would like to see your list of claims to authorship, but I would expect to see the evidence that goes along with it.
Looking through the broadside collections: Bagford, Roxborough, Ashton, Euing, Pepys...... even the later ones, Henderson, Holloway and Black.... I am always struck by the differences in both style and content to the traditional songs - how unsingable they are - not the similarities.
Jim Carroll