Subject: RE: What is a Folk Song?
From:
LaMarca
Date: 09 Jul 97 - 06:01 PM
I think a lot of the confusion about the definition of "Folk" music has been generated by the commercial recording industry. Businesses like record stores like to sort their stock by categories; therefore, all RECORDED music must be forced to fit into a few specific categories (ie. "Pop/Rock", "Soul", "C-W", "Reggae", "International", etc) so that the business can keep track of its stock.
In the early days of recording in the 20's and 30's, fledgling record companies put the most amazing stuff on discs, from Sardinian bagpipers to Irish accordion players to "race" records of some unknown black guitarist. Try to imagine Sony or Warner (or are they now the same company?) putting an ad in the paper requesting musicians to show up for a recording session in a hotel room in Bristol, Tennessee, and then immediately selling the resulting tracks to the general public in today's market atmosphere. Yet that was how The Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers and others got their (commercial) start. Their music was a mixture of old, traditional tunes and songs that had been passed around their community for years, and newly written material of their own. They'd been playing and writing music all along, but the rest of the world got to hear them after the Bristol sessions.
When The Weavers, Harry Belafonte, Oscar Brand, Theo Bikel, Richard Dyer-Bennett, et al. started recording in the 40's and 50's, they did a mixture of traditional music from their cultural backgrounds and newly written songs, both topical and lyrical, that were performed in the same style, with the same instrumentation. Record companies labelled their style "Folk". As the new, younger artists like Joan Baez and Judy Collins came along performing music and songs accompanied by acoustic instruments, those, too, got labelled "Folk", even if the songs themselves were more and more contemporary pop love songs or political and topical songs.
Nowadays, almost any songwriter who primarily records with an acoustic instrument (even if they have a full rock n' roll backup band) and writes songs about love, death, neuroses and politics, gets shoved in the "folk" category in the record store. Performers such as John Gorka, Suzanne Vega, David Roth, Anne Hills, Gordon Bok, etc. are all labelled "Folk".
Ultimately, ALL songs that people sing are about love, death, work, war and politics, whether they sing them on their own back porch or in a 95,000 seat arena. A lot of Child ballads, and Anglo-Irish broadsides and love songs were written by someone, somewhere in the murky depths of history, sometimes even for money. What else is there to sing about, after all? But I wouldn't call U2's "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" a folk song, whereas I would call "The Croppy Boy" folk. The difference, to me, lies in the elements of memory/tradition and the whole concept of home-made music.
To me, a song, tune or musical style/genrè doesn't really qualify as folk unless it's remembered/sung for more than 2 generations after it's written/composed, and there are people who like it well enough to:
A) Remember it well enough to play or sing by ear
B) Play or sing it at home or in social gatherings for their own pleasure, not for "performance" or for pay.
The whole issue of commercial vs. non-commercial gets raised a lot in discussions like these. Some people seem to draw their definitions of what written material is truly "folk" based on how commercially successful it is; fer instance, Gordon Bok is "folk", Gordon Lightfoot is not, because Lightfoot has broader commercial exposure and appeal than Bok. To my mind, neither of them are folk, or to look at the flip side, singing songs by either of them should be equally valid, because they're both from our current generation, and they're both songwriters who use the idiom to write about love, work, politics, etc. To snobbishly reject Lightfoot but say Bok or Stan Rogers are OK because they appeal to a more "select" audience is elitist and hypocritical. Wait until we hear our grandchildren singing for their own enjoyment songs that they've learned because they like them, and then I'll tell you which of today's singer/songwriters was writing "folk" songs.
As far as this forum goes, I'd like it to stick to material that can't be found on other databases, and that has some connection with an ethnic or regional tradition or particular community (Anglo/Scots, Cajun, blues, work songs from the sea, mines or lumber camps, etc.) Show tunes and Top-40 hits from our youth are fun, but they're (usually) available elsewhere. Singer/songwriter stuff from collections or recordings now out-of-print are OK; asking for stuff that's still readily commercially available in that songwriter's songbook(s) or records is starting to skirt on theft, in my opinion. If you want a song by Stan Rogers or John Gorka, you can support your favorite artist (or his heirs) by plunking down your money for their books and records. I know that I'm guilty of transgressing this guideline myself, but at least I have the grace to feel guilty about it.~:)
In short, music becomes "folk" not just because "the folk" sing it the year it's written or comes out on their radios, but because they AND their children AND their grandchildren CONTINUE to sing/play it in their own homes, for their own enjoyment, long after the record companies have lost interest in it because it's no longer profitable. Then not only is it Folk, it's a damned good song/tune/musical style!
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