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

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Paul Davenport
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 02:31 AM

'equally insulting to rural singers' ? What?
I don't think anyone is insulting rural singers. Nobody is arguing that broadside writers are not part of the people. Nobody has expressed a 'desire to dissociate folk music from interacting with the publishing industry'.
Equally, Tim, since you seem to like contention…the one thing we now know is not a contributing factor to our increasingly violent society…is corporal punishment in schools.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 06:34 AM

"What Jim seems to share with Cecil Sharp's ideology is a desire to dissociate folk music from interaction with the publishing industry of towns/cities"
I have not for one minute attempted to disassociate folk music from the publishing industry; I have been aware of that association at least since Bob Thomson did his work on the subject back in the sixties. Our own work with Irish ballad seller Mikeen McCarthy, has given us first hand knowledge of that link with print (see my article 'Mikeen McCarthy, Singer and Ballad Seller' in Singer, Song Scholar (ed Ian Russell, Sheffield Academic Press 1986). My argument is with the suggestion that our traditional repertoire ORIGINATED with the broadside presses - nothing more. Please can we avoid setting up straw men in order to knock them down and claim a victory - I really do thing this discussion is worthwhile enough for that.
An observation; at the time Child was putting his collection together the broadside presses would still have going full tilt. He was aware enough of them to refer to them as "veritable dunghills". It seems to me that it would have been, at best, extremely shoddy scholarship, and at worst, outright dishonesty, to present the products of those presses as 'The English And Scottish POPULAR Ballads', songs which had originated on those presses.
The same charge can be laid at the door of any ballad scolar, who again, would have been very negligent in dismissing any claimed authorship for the ballads they were studying, had they believed those claims to have been in any way valid.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Brian Peters
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 09:01 AM

There seem to be three different discussions going on here, and I must say I've found the exchanges between Jim and Steve very interesting, if ultimately unresolved. There is also the mystery of the tunes, which of course are not usually included in broadside copies and, where specified, are not always appropriate, or representative of tunes collected from singers. Now, if Steve is right and some of these songs were written for stage performance, then they would originally have possessed tunes - but how were these then disseminated? How much did such shows tour outside London?

Like MtheGM, I'm also struck by the fact that most traditional singers who have been questioned as to the sources of their songs said they'd learned them from family members, not from print. There was one singer on the old EFDSS Fred Hamer cassette who described buying broadsides and 'making up' the tunes, but that's a rare example.

Lastly, Steve asked:
"Which copy of 'A Warning to Married Women' ascribes the ballad to Laurence Price please? I have most of the 6 copies but I can't find it."

Dave Atkinson's paper on 'James Harris' in FMJ vol. 5 reproduces a copy of 'A Warning for Married Women' from the Euing Collection (#377) which bears the initials 'L.P.'. Dave A. credits Dave Harker for first attributing the broadside to Price, who was also the author of broadside copies if Child 106 (Famous Flower) and 147 (Robin Hood's Golden Prize).

The argument that Price's 1657 copy is not the origin of the 'Demon Lover' / 'Housecarpenter' ballad is discussed at length in Clinton Heylin's book 'Dylan's Daemon Lover', a populist and speculative account that does however contain a lot of interesting textual comparison of British and North American broadsides and collected versions. The argument rests on the fact that only a handful of Price's 32 (generally turgid and moralistic) verses correspond with those collected later from oral tradition, which tend to follow more closely the text of Child's 243B, first printed in 1737. Meanwhile, the theme of Price's 'A Warning for Married Women' strongly resembles that of the 1603 broadside 'A Warning for Maidens' (aka 'Bateman'), in which a young woman who has broken a betrothal is carried off by the spirit of her former lover.

The suggestion is that Price rewrote an existing (oral?) 'Ship's Carpenter' ballad using the template of 'A Warning for Maidens' (he even specified 'Bateman' as his tune) but retaining a few verses of the earlier ballad. Baring-Gould and Graves believed likewise that 'A Warning for Married Women' was a self-evident piece of hack bowdlerization. Price was known for adapting existing pieces - Robin Hood's Golden Prize was known as a tale more than a hundred years before he registered it. Atkinson cites a number of other examples of early broadside versions of Child ballads which do not represent those ballads' origins.

How much the tangled histories of centuries-old ballads have to do with the question of whether 'Rounding the Horn' was composed by a sailor with direct experience of Magellan's Straits and the girls of Valparaiso, is another matter. I still prefer to believe that at least some of our folksongs were composed and reworked by sons of the soil, like Uncle Bert told us they were, but I do think we need to take a lot of notice of the research by Steve and others.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: The Sandman
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 09:31 AM

I have no doubt,that Rounding the horn,was written by someone whoad a direct experience or who spent considerable time talking to sailors to get real experience.
lets take Ewan MaCColl,He was able to write convincing songs, because he had experience, he had sailors/fishermen talking about their experiences,he used the rhythyms of their speech,and their vernacular.
most broadside writers were concerned with making money as quickly as possible to sell a song,and getting a song out quickly.
so its possible that Rounding the Horn was the effort of a broadside writer but[imo]unlikely,on the other hand would a sailor have had the literary skills[many were illiterate].
of course it may have been folk processed,or it may be the work of more than one person.
I think it more likely to be the work of literate man who was at sea,perhaps a Captain,ships surgeon,or lower officer.
it is however a great song.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Howard Jones
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 11:19 AM

GSS, you ask if a sailor would have had the necessary literary skills to compose Rounding the Horn, as most were illiterate. However being unable to read or write does not prevent someone from having a fluency with language, as Jim has pointed out from his own experiences. The entire premise of the "Radio Ballads" was that ordinary people were more than capable of describing their own lives in both words and song with an imaginative use of language which belies their lack of education.

To pick up on an earlier point, I was at school in the 1960s when corporal punishment was still used. These were not "Tom Brown's Schooldays" style thrashings, but a few strokes with a cane or gym shoe. We accepted it without resentment, and it was usually preferred to detention or lines since it was quickly out of the way. It was easy to avoid simply by not breaking the rules, but if you did break the rules you knew you could expect to be punished. We were also perfectly capable of distinguishing between this, in a context of clear rules and discipline, and violence.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Stringsinger
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 11:39 AM

I was subjected to this in a high school gym class. I was in the process of doing pushups when the gym teacher struck me with a leather strap. I picked myself up and walked out of the class into the principal's office and said "do something about this". The gym teacher inevitably apologized fearing a lawsuit.

Literacy doesn't equate with intelligence or clarity of artistic expression. That's why we love folk music. It doesn't require academic prowess. At the same time, traditional folk musicians can be literate.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 12:46 PM

Can I just set the record straight - It was not my intention to start a debate on education in 1950s Liverpool.
In fairness to the teacher in question, and all the others in a similar situation - At the time the North West of England had the highest unemployment rate in Britain, and pupils were leaving school almost inevitably to a long period on the dole - I was looking for work for six months before I finally found an apprenticeship (thanks to a fellow International Brigader friend of my fathers).
It must have been extremely soul-destroying for teachers who were well aware that their efforts were going into instilling knowledge into youngsters who would almost certainly end up unemployed, or at best, with crap jobs.
In the main, I think they did their best in a shitty situation not of their own making.
My purpose in raising the topic was to point out how working people were dismissed (generally, not just by my teacher) as far as creativity is concerned, and how - with a handful of exceptions - nothing much has really changed).
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Paul Davenport
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 01:07 PM

I'm not convinced about this notion of illiterate working classes. Certainly there were large numbers of illiterates in the past but when you consider that reading the bible was widespread, and attendance at church with the use of the Book of Common Prayer and Hymnals equally common, it seems a bit condescending to reckon that illiteracy at its most basic was a universal norm. There have been points in history where religious observance has been a political necessity and its associated literacy a matter of survival. Couple this with the simple fact that broadsides simply wouldn't have sold in such huge numbers to a mostly illiterate populace and the ability to read was probably a norm. But…our definition of literacy includes writing and this was a much rarer skill, confined, one suspects to a minority who were probably of higher income. Note the number of deaths by 'penknife' in ballads and you get a picture of writing as an upper class skill. These tools, ostensibly for sharpening quills for writing, are frequently described as 'hanging down by the knee' and such ostentation might be construed as a statement of status by virtue of literacy beyond mere 'reading'.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 01:42 PM

It may be worth noting that working-class characters in Shakspere could frequently read & write: think of the banausic actors in Midsummer Night's Dream, all of whom were given their parts written out by Peter Quince, and could read them; or the passage in Much Ado where Dogberry the constable asks the watch which of them would be best fitted to be his deputy, and receives the answer "Hugh Oatcake, sir, or George Seacole, for they can write and read": which it seems to me implies that these were abilities respected and striven for among ordinary working people in the early C17 .

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 02:00 PM

Like Paul Davenport I suspect that literacy was common in the 19th century and earlier. Whole books have been written about working class 'auto-didacts' in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Northamptonshire labourer, John Clare, for example had a minimal amount of education but published several volumes of poetry in his lifetime (and several more have been attributed to him after his death). In South Lancashire many districts had botanical societies made up of men who could not only read and write but were familiar with the Linnaean system of plant classification. One of them, a poor shoemaker named Richard Buxton, taught himself to read and write before embarking on a study of the science of botany and eventually publishing a local Flora (prefaced with his autobiography).

I've just been reading a biography of the 17th century herbalist, Nicholas Culpepper. He defied the patrician College of Physicians and published many of their Latin tomes in English translations. Why would he have done that if he didn't think that there was a market for them?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: GUEST,glueperson
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 02:21 PM

"These were not "Tom Brown's Schooldays" style thrashings, but a few strokes with a cane or gym shoe. We accepted it without resentment, and it was usually preferred to detention or lines since it was quickly out of the way"

You were lucky. Canings at our school in the 60s and 70s meant the victim couldn't sit down for three days. More alarming was the obvious glee with which the operation was undertaken, on a bare arse, and by a member of staff who interfered with young boys I subsequently learned.

With a few notable exceptions the standard of teaching was gruesome and violence endemic.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 02:22 PM

Brian,
The tune dissemination. It completely depended on how popular the songs were. If they were immensely popular for long periods the tunes became well known in all walks of life and therefore in many cases stayed roughly the same down the centuries;e.g. Gossip Joan. The tune used by Will and John and the Holme Valley Beagles is almost the same as the one published in 1790 and probably earlier. Those that were reprinted on broadsides and weren't quite so universally popular (the vast majority) ended up in oral tradition with quite different tunes and in some cases many different tunes for each ballad because the chaunter/ballad seller used his/her own tune, whatever fitted that they had in their own repertoire. This is also the main reason (imo)why we often find the same tunes used for several ballads.

Thanks for the further info on Demon Lover. When I get more time I intend to carry out my own close study of this.

I'll also check out David's article in FMJ5. If anyone else wants to reread it it's Vol 5 number 5 starting at p592. Since this article was written (1989)I think David has had cause to modify his thoughts on broadside origins.

Regarding the forebitters: Of course the few that actually contain authentic nautical terms in them were very likely written by sailors on shore. They certainly were not all illiterate. Don't forget the press gangs took anybody they could lay their hands on. The forerunner of 'The London Man o War'/Lion/Bold Wasp etc etc' was written in 1746 by the captain of the ship 'Nottingham' that was involved in taking the Frenchman. No doubt he sold it to the printers and when the Nottingham was forgotten the broadside hacks simply changed the name of the battleship to a currently famous one. It sold more copies that way. Some of the broadside hacks would have been ex sailors especially at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. many would have been disabled and have been begging on the streets. Broadside hacks as Ernest states were just one step up from beggar, unless they were very good at it like John Morgan. Many of the ballads about naval encounters, shipwrecks etc were simply rehashes of what had been printed in the newspapers of the day. Again I can give examples, but I must get on. I've just found a version of The Silk Merchant's Daughter Laws N10 which is a century earlier than the hitherto earliest known version.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Brian Peters
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 02:33 PM

"(the vast majority) ended up in oral tradition with quite different tunes and in some cases many different tunes for each ballad because the chaunter/ballad seller used his/her own tune, whatever fitted that they had in their own repertoire."

What interests me is where you get a number of song variants from different parts of the country which have tunes that are recognizably the same, but subtly different. Think of Phil Tanner's 'Henry Martin' compared with Sam Larner's 'Lofty Tall Ship'. Or the various versions of 'Ship in Distress' from Sussex, Somerset and Shropshire, which have tunes that are all the smae shape but include examples in three different modes. This has to be 'folk process', doesn't it?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 03:36 PM

One factor I forgot to mention, Brian, is the pedlar who amongst his other commodities went from place to place selling the ballads. He would have used the same tune in different places to sell his ballad sheets. Other than that, migration of farm labourers (best example the seasonal Irish labourers), general worker migration was very common. Remember labour was purely a commodity to the entrepreneurs and labourers had to go wherever the work was or starve.

I have no expertise in tune comparison as I can barely read music. I am an ardent campaigner though for the study of tune relationships which is a sadly understudied subject. There are lots of us studying texts but hardly anyone the tunes.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Paul Davenport
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 04:49 PM

There's a way of comparing tunes without needing to be a good reader. I'll check it out and get back to you on it. As I remember it produces a formula not dissimilar to a knitting pattern which is the same for all versions of the tune regardless of key. I used it to examine the local hornpipes for a paper some years ago.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Tootler
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 04:54 PM

I seem to remember from many years back being told that at the time of the Foster Education act in 1870 (which brought in compulsory elementary eduction for all in the UK) about 70% of the UK population could read and write at least to some degree.

It also seems that there was a pretty substantial level of musical literacy as well. After all how could all the manuscript tune books have been produced otherwise? The 19th century also saw the birth of most of our brass bands, choral societies and male voice choirs. All of these required a degree of musical literacy and before that the parish churches maintained bands and choirs to provide music for the services.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 06:17 PM

Whilst all of this is true, Tootler, the vast majority of these songs were written c1750-1820.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Joe_F
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 06:19 PM

If a Yank may butt in: By chance I have read a remarkable book, _The Uses of Literacy_ by Richard Hoggart, which gives a good deal of information & informed reflection on the culture (including songs) of the British working class in the decades up to the 1950s, at which time that class was still pretty well defined.

It's still in print.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Paul Davenport
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 01:49 AM

Joe, the book, like the British class system is now well out of date. Also, the concept of 'working class' is and was a gross simplification of what was actually there. The eality was a stratum of society which involved both skilled and unskilled orkers and artisans of varying states of education/literacy.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 02:23 AM

Actually, Paul those were the very points Hoggart made in his distinguished study all those years ago. His concept of 'working class' was nothing like as simplistic as you seem to believe. Allowing for the 50+ years since its first publication, I think, if you were to revisit it, you would find it still had a fair bit of relevance to tell us about relationships between the different elements of our society. I don't think you would find it so dated as to have nothing to say any longer.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 03:29 AM

"the vast majority of these songs were written c1750-1820."
Sorry again Steve - this continues to be unsubstantiated speculation - all you are entitled to claim with any certainty is that these songs were WRITTEN DOWN c1750-1820.
Just as speculative is - ".....were very likely written by sailors on shore."
Do you have any ground for claiming this?
The few examples we have of accounts of songs being MADE (they were not committed to paper until a later date, and in the case of the Travellers, not at all), but remained in the heads of their makers and those they passed them on to. On two occasions we got descriptions of the circumstances of songs being made by groups of people (a political song from West Clare circa 1922 and a Travellers song about an arranged marriage some time in the mid-sixties). On both these occasions our informant was unable to give us the names of the song makers - it didn't seem important.
There is a great danger of placing too much importance on the link between tunes and texts. Singers who have been part in a living tradition have stressed to us that they considered the tunes as merely vehicles for the stories and have been quite happy to take a tune from another song because they felt it fitted more than the one it came with. Two brothers we recorded around 20 songs from gave us something like half of them to the same tune, while others would sing the same song to a different tune on different occasions.
Singers who learned songs from the ballad sheets would, more often than not, select a tune from their existing repertoire or make a new one.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Brian Peters
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 05:31 AM

>> There is a great danger of placing too much importance on the link between tunes and texts. Singers who have been part in a living tradition have stressed to us that they considered the tunes as merely vehicles for the stories <<

Looking at the older ballads in particular, Jim, I'm well aware of a certain interchangeability of tunes and texts. At least one example comes to my mind of a single singer having used different tunes for a ballad on different occasions.

However if you look at alternative versions of songs, like the aforementioned 'Henry Martin' and 'Ship in Distress', in the old collections such as those now available at the 'Take 6' archive, the striking thing is that the tunes are all recognizably the same beast, even though significant details like the mode may be different. If indeed the tunes were disseminated by itinerant ballad sellers or labourers, we still have to allow for individual shaping of melody (and quite possibly text as well), in the new location. To my mind a switch from Ionian to Dorian mode conveys such a change in mood that it's hard to imagine it having occurred accidentally, but maybe that is just my perception as a musician in 2009.

Paul, can you tell us more about this device (software) for comparing tune shapes? I knew such a thing existed but had understood it was desperately complicated to use.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 06:27 AM

To my mind a switch from Ionian to Dorian mode conveys such a change in mood that it's hard to imagine it having occurred accidentally, but maybe that is just my perception as a musician in 2009.[quote]
could this have been the fault of the collector who possibly thought,the singer could not be singing the melody in a mode ,so it must be intended to be in the major key.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Brian Peters
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 08:37 AM

Dick, my impression is that collectors like Sharp and RVW were keen to find the more *unusual* modes, and if anything they are more likely to have erred in that direction. Listening to traditional recordings it's quite common to hear notes sung that are ambiguous in pitch, whether as a result of deliberate microtonal placement or simple inaccuracy, and I do sometimes wonder whether there's a temptation for transcribers to opt for the more exotic-sounding option. A particular example came up at the Sheffield 'Tradsong' meeting, where we were invited to compare sound recording with transcription for a song from the J. M. Carpenter collection.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 09:02 AM

Brian,
Just sounding a warning about tunes - too many definitive statements being made here already without my adding to them.
I suggest you get hold of some of the John Reilly recordings to hear a singer not only changing the tunes, but also the verse structure.
One of the finest examples of mode change was the late Tom Costello (Tom Paidín Tom) singing (breathtakingly beautifully) The Grand Conversation on Napoleon.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 01:10 PM

Jim,
As you well know by now, I was referring to, once again, that body of song that is largely common to all of the English-speaking world, 95% of which I can actually show you the broadsides for and again the vast majority of these the earliest copies were from the period 1750 to 1820. Many of them are actually about events which OCCURRED in this period. I fully accept your local marriage songs and political songs will have different histories, but they are not part of the corpus I refer to above. Just in case you get the wrong idea again, I am not devaluing the songs you mention or trying in any way to say they are not traditional.

Regarding sailors' songs. You ask me for evidence. On many occasions the songs that are about actual incidents have been traced back to an early broadside contemporary with the event. There is a LOCAL song to where I live (The Wreck of the Industry off Spurn point) which has been collected in oral tradition in various parts of the country. The broadside versions I have seen, the earliest is about 1850. The event is a true one which happened in 1819. After many years searching I found the original newspaper report and the ballad is almost word for word as in the report. This is one example among many.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 01:18 PM

Brian,
The thread-creep on this thread is already getting way out of hand, interesting as it is.
Regarding the early broadsides originating Child Ballads, e.g, The Demon Lover, I think it better if we start a new thread.

Early Broadsides (was Music of the People... etc)

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Paul Davenport
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 01:29 PM

Brian, the 'device' is an intellectual process not a software one although I suppose it might be possible to write a piece of software to do it. It's something I came upon in a book when doing another project and the writer outlined his way of analysing melodies in such a way as to reduce the intervals to a numeric pattern. He was then able to compare these patterns. I'll try to locate the book and the method as soon as possible - time permitting.
Paul

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 03:10 PM

Steve,
And I am talking about our national (and indo-European repertoire) the bulk of which, in the case of sea songs, covers the day to day life aboard ship, the exploits of sailors ashore, their fantasies - their lives and experiences..... in a way, it seems to me, that could not be depicted by an outsider, any more than could a townie make anything closely resembling a bothy song with all its authenticity.
You tried (unsuccessfuly IMO) to make a special case for the Aberdeenshire songs with a description that could be applied to any isolated community (or a ship's crew, navvy gang, ranking soldier....)
My point, in constantly bringing up local songs is that 'the people' have more han proven themselves as makers of songs and it is far more probable that the songs in our national repertoire, with all their authenticity, are far more likely to have originated from the people whose lives they depict than a handful of townie hacks.
You suggest the pressing to sea of broadside writers - do you have any information on this having happened or is it speculation on your part?
You suggest sailors coming ashore to make songs - why ashore; even the most hard-pressed seamen had leisure time (according to Hugill anyway).
Do you know what the 'dead-man's -face' is in the Banks of Newfoundland - would a townie broadside hack?
Personally I attach no more significance to claims to authorship on brodside versions of traditional songs than I do to the fact the wealthy musician Phil Coulter owns a copyright on 'Well Below The Valley' (Maid and The Palmer').
It seems to me that, by denying their main claim to creativity, the folk songs, you have set your mind to proving, like my teacher and Duncan Emrich, that 'the people' created nothing of any signifgicance.
Nothing new there - it has been happening most of my musical life and it flies in the face of everything I've read, been told, and experienced over the last forty odd years, so I will continue to argue with you as long as you continue to present your opinions as facts.
Best,
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 06:24 PM

I thought I had presented them as opinions backed up by my own research and experiences. I have already clearly stated that the common people have creativity in abundance when given the opportunity to express it. If Hugill states that seamen had leisure time, it wasn't during the Napoleonic Wars. Yes I do know what the deadman's face is. Songs that include exclusive technical terms are few and far between. The vast bulk of the songs contain material that would have been common knowledge to all during the period discussed. More than half deal with amorous encounters and most people have had these.

I didn't suggest the pressing to sea of broadside writers. I stated clearly that the press gangs weren't fussy who they took, and at their height they took many middle class people so that is one way there would have been literate people aboard the fleet before the mast.

I am not denying that the sailors before the mast made songs at sea. The merchantmen obviously made most of the sea shanties (some were shore songs adapted) but the majority of their songs surely (IMO) would have been the parodies and bawdy songs that were also endemic in the two world wars of the last century. Not many of these found their way into folk song anthologies until quite recently.

Jim, I see no problem with both of us holding our strongly held different opinions, backed up by our obviously different experiences and this does not worry me.

I will repeat my challenge for you to come up with half a dozen songs from the general canon and I will check their probable origins out. It may well be that you come up with some that were not written by broadside hacks or for commercial gain. There are plenty in the canon, but I still state the vast majority were originally written for commercial gain (IMO)

Here's a good cross section of categories
1 Child ballad
1 love song
1 lament
1 murder ballad
1 forebitter
1 carol
chosen at random to give me a chance at least.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Nov 09 - 03:43 AM

Steve, I have no doubt you can produce what you believe to be PROBABLE origins for half - a dozen, a dozen, twenty.... however many you care to choose - I could produce some myself. What I need to shift from my opinion and abandon the work we have done over the last thirty odd years is WHY they PROBABLY (a shift in itself) originated where you claim they did - other than the they sold them under their own name
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Lighter
Date: 18 Nov 09 - 10:03 AM

Unfortunately I came late to this thread, so I'll offer just these opinions for discussion.

Except in an extraordinary case, forensic proof of whether the ur-text of an old song was written by a broadside hack, a plowboy, or even by committee will never be forthcoming.

The more coherent, impersonal, and detailed a traditional narrative is, the more likely it was created by someone who was literate. Lyrics made up largely of "floaters" are more likely the work of unlettered people because they're less used to learned requirements for coherence and consistency.   

First-person narratives with many atypical deatails are more likely to have been written by a participant or close observer.

It would be extremely interesting to compare, stylistically, a corpus of songs never found on broadsides with a somehow comparable group that we know made early broadside appearances.

Finally, as has been said, "trad" songs, no matter how modernized in performance even by geniuses like the early Steeleye Span, are no longer the "music of the people." They are the music of enthusiasts like us.

Trad dance music is a little more popular (square dances and so on), but overall the teeming millions want their rock, rap, country, classical, etc. The eclipse of trad music is sad, perhaps, but inescapable. Cf. my note yesterday on the "Drop Everything" thread, suggesting that even for Mudcatters, trad isn't all that exciting.

Or is it just the weather here?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Marje
Date: 18 Nov 09 - 10:46 AM

I'm not sure, Lighter, that trad music is any less valued than many other forms of music now. The days when there was a recognised body of popular tunes that everyone recognised are long gone - popular music is much more fragmented nowadays, and one person's iPod playlist may be totally different from anyone else's.

In other words, I'm not at all sure that there is any real "music of the people" now, in the sense of there being a shared musical understanding and a known collection of songs/tunes that most people are familiar with. What we have instead is a number of different musical genres, cults, trends and fashions, into which most people dip in a mix-and-match way. The trad genre isn't familiar to most people, but then neither are many of the newest types of dance music, or classical string quartets, or heavy metal.

If all this is true, then traditional music is certainly "music of the people", because we're people - enthusiasts, sure, but still people - and it's our music. What's more, much of the repertoire was (and some still is) actually created and shaped by ordinary people like us, to provide a soundtrack to their daily lives. This sets it apart from music that's been written for worship, or for the stage, or for wealthy patrons to hear in concerts, etc. It belongs to us in a special way, and as long as we continue to value it, play it and listen to it, it's far from dead.

Marje

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Paul Davenport
Date: 18 Nov 09 - 10:59 AM

Err…but I knew a lot of songs before I was 'one of us' – is the problem being 'one of us' ?

I get really p****d off with this crap about, "the revival' versus the 'tradition' I have not stopped being myself at any time (so far) and in my reckoning I'm a person - or are the 'people' now some elite to which I may not belong? If so then they and not I are in the minority.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Nov 09 - 11:07 AM

"The more coherent, impersonal, and detailed a traditional narrative is, the more likely it was created by someone who was literate."
Not necessarily; almost total non literacy among Travellers brought with it a heightened ability to retain in memory - in the last half century the longest, rarest and most complicated of our ballads have survived among non-literate Irish and Scots Travellers.
Also the case with the older generation of West of Ireland singers whose education was fairly rudimentary.
Walter Pardon, while being highly literate (had read every Dickens, Hardy and most of the Victorian novels at least half-a-dozen times) and could remember all the plots and characters (even the minor ones) with no effort whatever.
With all these people we met and recorded we noticed the ability, not only to remember long, complicated songs they had not sung for a long time, sometimes up to fifty years, virtually on request.

On the question of origins; I have to say that this argument intrigued me enough to revisit our books on the broadside trade - nowhere could I find even the remotest suggestion that a substantial number of our traditional songs originated on broadside.
Experts like G Malcolm Laws writes about broadsides and the tradition existing side by side and, at times, feeding from one another, but that was about it.
Probably the subject was given the most attention by Leslie Shepherd, surely the leading expert on British broadsides, in his History of Street Literature.
Sorry about the length.
Jim Carroll

"The oral tradition of songs, ballads and rituals was the forerunner of street literature in peasant society before printing. In the decentralised societies of the past there were always pockets of tradition in which a poor man would remain the carrier of lost mysteries and beautiful insights, in a song which had little to do with his poverty and working conditions, and even less with the politics of the state.
As with the broadsides which overtook them, some of the folk songs were trivial and banal, but the best of them had a timeless meaning that reached to the roots of the human situation. It was an impulse for which mere literary cleverness and topicality could not be a substitute.
Folk song and folklore were not the final stage of religious descent, for urban folklore took over form and themes from the country tradition, and the printed format of broadsides and chapbooks continued and enlarged the fading oral tradition. Even today there are still a few traditional folk singers in Britain, but most of their repertoire was printed on the broadsides which became part of the traditional process.
If ballads, folk songs, and romances were the last flicker of an ancient metaphysical impulse before its transmutation into social and political mythologies, the street literature of broadsides and chapbooks continued to reflect this gleam before they too were supplanted by the sophisticated culture of books. The history of this process is not so much a formal affair of dates and titles, but rather of trends and phases.......
Traditional ballads were not at first common on the broadsides. The emphasis was on topicality, and many broadsides were titled
'A New Ballad of'. Newness was the feature most stressed by the street hawkers and pedlars. But even the most up-to-date broadside compositions were more often than not to be sung to a wistful old ballad or country-dance tune, and so tradition carried topicality on a musical measure. It is possible that old ballads and country songs were eventually printed on broadsides because they did not involve a fee to a ballad writer, but it is more likely that city dwellers sometimes tired of novelty and hungered for tradition. Many cultured writers took a wistful backward look at traditional themes, and during the eighteenth century sophisticated literature tried to rediscover the romantic tradition of ballads. The antiquarian Bishop Thomas Percy started the first ballad revival with his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, a curious mixture of traditional and broadside verses. Of the 176 pieces in the first edition of the Reliques published in 1765, only 45 were from the old folio manucript acquired by Percy, but by touching up certain ballads, omitting bawdy items and inserting broadside pieces, Percy introduced polite society to traditional balladry, and gave a new impulse to European literature, in the German romantic movement of Herder, and, in Britain, in the work of Scott, Burns, Wordsworth, Coleridge and others. Soon it became possible for cultured gentlemen to collect folk music from uncultured peasants, while the most polished writers tried to copy the accents of ancient balladry. Generally it was the more plodding broadside verse that was mistaken for the older folk style, and real traditional folk-music collecting awaited the broadminded country parsons of the nineteenth century, like the Rev John Broadwood and the Rev Sabine Baring-Gould.
Broadsides preserved something of tradition at a time when folk memory was beginning to fail. Many news items excited a sense of wonder and awe, and much of topicality was not unmixed with superstition. The verse form itself, as well as the music of the ballads, kept city dwellers in touch with an older, more mysterious past. Chapbooks kept alive the ancient legends and folk tales at a time when men were increasingly concerned with practical affairs.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Lighter
Date: 18 Nov 09 - 01:18 PM

But does the remembering of long, complex songs require the same skills as composing them?

To take a very different sort of case, Parry and Lord's guslars (a tiny minority of the population, IIRC)could create small epics almost on demand, but they weren't stanzaic and didn't rhyme, features which add complexity and tax concentration even more.

I'm not suggesting, of course, that illiterate people didn't have talent, especially when most of the population, including the mute inglorious Miltons, was illiterate. It's just that the more artistically satisfying songs (including most of those that eventually led us here) are very likely to have been composed, or extensively overhauled, by the more rather than the less sophisticated members of the community.

I vaguely recall that David C. Fowler suggested similar ideas many years ago, but memory is hazy.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Paul Davenport
Date: 18 Nov 09 - 01:39 PM

Yes but Parry and Lords subjects created their epics by the use of formulaics. Strictly speaking they were 'assembling' the songs rather than 'creating' them in performance. They may not have rhymed by they were locked into a rhythmic syntax which made them songs by definition. Incidentally, I have seen and heard the spontaneous creation of a version of 'The Brown Girl' in a singaround setting, complete with original melody, by a singer who wanted to test whether he could do it. The song was accepted by all as 'traditional' which, by conventional interpretation of that word, it certainly was. The use of formulaics and other balladic devices has been explored by others at some length. Suffice it to say, it's not very difficult to create an authentic sounding ballad by the use of such tools. As I said earlier, there is a world of difference between 'functional literacy' and the ability to read and write. Anyone who is functionally literate can produce verses. Similarly, when was this mythical time when most were illiterate. The participants in the Peasants Revolt not only organised themselves via written notes but in addition they encrypted them! Things have only got more literate since then.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Howard Jones
Date: 18 Nov 09 - 01:44 PM

I think we're in danger of viewing this from our own modern perspective. We live in a much more mobile society, where someone with intelligence and talent has a much greater opportunity to use these and to rise above disadvantaged beginnings. In earlier times, this was not the case. Many of these 'peasants' (for want of a better word) would have had the intelligence and talent to create. What better than a song or a ballad, which need no resources other than time to think, to express this creativity?

As for being unsophisticated, they may have had little exposure to art music but they were immersed in the musical and textual idioms of their own tradition. Actually, they may have been more aware of art music than we give them credit for - many country musicians' tunebooks contain pieces by classical composers, and they may have had formal musical training in the army or by the church.

It seems to me that it matters little how a song originated. What is significant about a folk song is the way it has then been adapted and changed by successive singers, and often recreated in every performance. That creative process was open to anyone who could sing. Surely that is what we celebrate?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Nov 09 - 03:06 PM

Chancing my arm at a theory I don't altogether subscribe to:
David Buchan, in his 'The Ballad and The Folk' put forward the suggestion that the ballads didn't have set texts, only plots, but, with the aid of conventions, commonplaces, repetitions, etc., the singer would re-create it each time it was sung.
I don't think he made his point very well, but like all such theories, I believe it to have a grain of truth.
Can a singer make a complicated song and commit it to his or her memory? I think so - as I've said, some of the singers we've met had phenomenal memories and they were steeped completely in their singing traditions.
It was once claimed (Lomax - Lloyd - can't remember), that in Yugoslavia a would-be bard would be apprenticed to a master and the leaving exam was that he/she would have to improvise a ballad of a given length to be accepted as a ballad singer.
Isn't that what Scots 'flytings' were - tests of improvisational skills?
Many of the Hebridean waulking songs were improvisations on a smaller scale (the one that was made on 'The Handsome American (Lomax) for instance).
In a small way I saw something similar with MacColl not long before he stopped performing. A couple of times his memory failed him (a very rare occurence) and he would improvise chunks of the ballad without it being noticed, except to those of us who knew his repertiore backwards.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 18 Nov 09 - 03:20 PM

I find that interesting, Jim, because, if I make a mistake in a song during performance [get the words of a line in the wrong order, e.g., so that the rhyme word fails to come at the end] I can generally think on my feet quickly enough to make up another rhyme as a sort of patch as I'm singing; generally nobody notices. Hadn't realised Ewan did that. I do, though, remember once at the Louise he was trying to sing Blantyre Explosion, but kept starting "As I walked out" & then stopping & looking blank & saying to Peggy "What is the rest of the line?" & she shrugged — till in the end, without wanting to be officious, I could stand it no more & called out "By Clyde's bonny banks"; & he smiled gratefully & said "That's it" & launched into the song.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 18 Nov 09 - 04:44 PM

Having read Buchan's theories on this, I also have been experimenting with it. Using my knowledge of the plot and multiple versions I have been singing in public a version of 'The Cruel Mother' and 'The Two Sisters'. Because of the nature of the refrains, and repetitive lines in TTS I have found it quite easy so every time I sing them I recreate them. I'm probably unconsciously using lines from the many different versions I've heard.

I've also seen people make up cohesive songs on the spot when p---d out of their heads. Johnny Handle once did this extremely effectively at the conclusion of a bawdy songs session at Whitby Festival about 10 years ago. He went round the room and made up a verse about each person there. I'm not sure if he was using an existing structure or not, but it worked.

Howard, if you're a singer and not interested in song histories then yes, the origins don't matter (unless they're copyright), but quite a lot of us do happen to be interested in where they come from, for all sorts of reasons, not least natural curiosity.

Jim, Leslie Shepherd's lengthy piece you quote skirts around the question of origin on individual songs. Leslie was certainly a leading light in the history of the broadside trade, but he wasn't all that involved with individual songs. Some more recent writers have gone into much more detail.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Paul Davenport
Date: 18 Nov 09 - 06:32 PM

Just got back from the Ballads Club in Sheffield. There was a morris team practicing elsewhere in the building. One singer in our group got up and sang a really obscure version of 'Dives and Lazarus'. Suddenly he sat down and stopped, 'Sorry', he said, "I can't get the tune right'. It was only then we realised he'd been singing to the morris tune next door. His intended tune turned out to be THE 'Dives and Lazarus' tune. He'd unconsciously re-fitted his words to make it fit what he was hearing. Just thought I'd share this with you.
Paul :-)

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Folkiedave
Date: 18 Nov 09 - 07:35 PM

There was a morris team practicing elsewhere in the building.

There often is in that building. Bloody morris dancers. :-)

How'd it go?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Howard Jones
Date: 18 Nov 09 - 07:51 PM

I agree the history of a song is always of interest. What I was trying to say, in the context of this discussion, is that the original composition of a song is just part of the creative process, and not necessarily the most significant.

It is probable, indeed almost certain, that singers' repertoires have always included both songs which originated from "the people" and also popular songs of the day. The important part of the creative process of folk song, it seems to me, is not so much the original act of composition but how it is subsequently altered, edited and amended by successive singers.

It is striking how often the doggerel of a broadside hack has been reworked into a thing of beauty by the singers who performed it. Is that not what the creativity of the people really means?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Nov 09 - 04:01 AM

"Jim, Leslie Shepherd's lengthy piece you quote skirts around the question of origin on individual songs."
Possibly because he, like the rest of us, didn't know the origins of the songs and was not prepared to speculate.
Laws appeared to take a similar stance, as did all the writers on the subject that I have ever come across.
This is the bit in Shepherd's piece that rings the truest to me:
"It is possible that old ballads and country songs were eventually printed on broadsides because they did not involve a fee to a ballad writer."
Doesn't beat around the bush there - "put not your trust in businessmen" - always worked for me.
Bronson went as far as to repeat the suggestion that Barbara Allen, which he regarded as s country song, was introduced into the city by Mrs Knipp singing it on stage.
But there again, until we have some fresh information everything is speculation really!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 19 Nov 09 - 06:22 PM

Howard, 100% agreement. You've made the most important clear statement on this thread as far as I'm concerned.

Jim,"It is possible that old ballads and country songs were eventually printed on broadsides because they did not involve a fee to a ballad writer." Yes, Leslie was certainly being cautious here. It's not just 'possible', there is plenty of evidence of this, but.....Naaa!

Speculation? Informed opinion? Okay.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Nov 09 - 03:01 PM

"Naaa!"
Why?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 20 Nov 09 - 05:22 PM

Well okay since you ask, I was going to say, yes there was plenty of interplay between oral and print, but....I still am convinced that most of them actually started out on the broadsides, i.e., that was how they came to public notice. We're never going to agree, Jim. Why pursue it? We both base our stances on our experiences. So be it!

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Nov 09 - 07:59 PM

Because it undermines the whole concept of 'the people's' ability to create it's/our own culture rather than having it created for them/us.
An age-old battle I'm happy to participate in until I run out of puff - it really is as important, and as basic as that.
Duncan Emrich also referred to the song Lakes of Col Finn "descending to the level of the folk" - now why do I find that offensively patronising, do you think?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Paul Davenport
Date: 21 Nov 09 - 04:01 AM

Steve, where your argument falls down is on the statistics. Most people learn songs orally, nothing to do with literacy, that's how it is even today. I'm not talking about folkies here, I'm talking about people in general. What consititutes 'song' can be anything from a pop song to a TV ad jingle. Writing it down is and always was, a LAST resort in communicating something that was already known. Yesterday I was teaching a year 9 class songwriting. Their preference is to make up the song and THEN write it down. They sing it before it is fixed. If they can do it, how much more likely is it that those involved in repetitive work have done the same thing in the past? Based on observation and the state of human beings I find it much more plausible that the song (in the case of non-political/news items) comes long before the broadside. You also have an analogy in the case of the Victory Bands recordings where the B side contained trad material to avoid excessive payments of rights.