Can a pop song become traditional?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 07:18 AM

"...Brand gave his collection". Sorry; name omitted above.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 07:31 AM

"Regarding point 3: It does seem that there is some contention between the academic community and the people banksie describes who frequent the 'typical pub'."
Hit and run comments I'm afraid - your "typical pub" don't give a toss one way or the other; we've failed to engage them in what I believe to be their heritage, to our eternal shame.
The very music that some here seek to claim as 'folk' or 'traditional' has disenfranchised them from their heritage and turned them into armchair recipients of a culture rather than makers and interpreters.
"spurious and arbitrary definition"
Flawed maybe, but neither S or A., but arrived at after a great deal of personal experience, thought and discussion. The didn't get all right first time round, pioneers seldom do, but they gave us something to work with, as well as enough beautiful songs to fill several lifetimes.
If you want 'arbitrary' try Johnny B Goode - why not Olbla Dee, Oobla Da, or Viva Espania, or Funiculi Funicula.
The oft repeated misinformation that traditional singers didn't discriminate between types continues to be arrant nonsense no matter how many times iyt is repeted.
They had their own identification tag for these songs, the claimed them as their own, they had a familiarity with the subject matter that no outsider could possibly have - AND THEY VISUALISED AND IDENTIFIED WITH THEM IN A WAY THEY NEVER DID OR COULD BY THE STORE BOUGHT PRODUCTS THAT ARE BEING PRESENTED HERE AS 'FOLK AND TRADITIONAL.
Bye for now,
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 07:47 AM

it seems to me that some posters are confusing the issue by using the word indiscriminately, and sometimes simultaneously, in both/all of these senses at once.

As an ill-educated lower-caste oik content to ramble the hinterlands of Popular Music in general I have no problem whatsoever in Popular meaning the same in a Prof Child sense or a Tim Westwood sense or an Annie Nightingale sense. Pop is an umbrella heading for a myriad styles, idioms and genres that are born from the 50,000 year old tradition of Vernacular Music Making, and which continues with vigour to this day. Indeed, as long as there are Human Beings alive, there will be Vigorous Popular Music Making.

Folk, OTOH, is a prescriptively precious construct, hatched from on high, which seeks after an all too elusive purity, and when it finds it, it isolates it, refashions it into something it never was in its natural habit - be it Cecil Sharp making a parlour arrangement of The Seeds of Love, or Peter Bellamy singing Butter and Cheese and All. Both are equally contrived; both are an artitifice. Folk is a subject of fetishism for a crypto-religious elite that doesn't really connect with the 'real world'. This is, of course, an integral part of its appeal for the cranky, mad, eccentric, idiosyncratic, curmudeonly, misanthropic self-serving middle-class academic elite that typifies the Folk Scene even unto this day.

I say these things as a lover of Folk Music. But its worth remembering that whilst much Great Music is done by Folkies (I bet Cecil's arrangement of SOL was a cracker; just as Bellamy's various recorded renderings B&C&A are amongst my life's joys) there are no Proper Folk Songs ever sung in a Revival Context. The Proper Folk Songs are dead and gone with the Proper Folk Singers; and the Stone that Builders Rejected is the Cornerstone of all Future Vernacular Music Making on Planet Earth regardless of idiom.

Including Folk? Maybe...

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: johncharles
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 08:03 AM

Traditional songs are only traditional because they are old. when they were first sung they would have been the popular songs of the time and the area in which they were sung. Printing allowed wider circulation, but recording and transmission are relatively new phenomena.
Collectors,academics and committed traditional singers have a particular view of the importance of old songs which does not seem to be shared by the vast majority of the population.
Deriding the majority for their poor taste and inactivity is a form of snobbery all to evident in academic circles.
john.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: johncharles
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 08:07 AM

"too" evident

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Brian Peters
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 08:13 AM

theleveller wrote:

"...an artificial construct backed up by a spurious and arbitrary definition - Seems more likely that there have always been popular songs which are relevant to a particular time and context."

The second bit is partly true, but not the whole story. Roy Palmer's great book 'Working Songs' uses historical accounts to demonstrate that industrial protest songs were actually sung widely (including in pubs) during the period of their composition - which was welcome because previously all we had to go on were a host of printed broadsides and the occasionally suspect claims of Bert Lloyd - but we still don't have evidence that those songs were passed down through succeeding generations.

The kind of songs that folk revivalists have generally concentrated on are a bit different, though. These were songs - many of which actually were the popular songs of the 18th century or before - that took such a hold on the populace that they were still being used for diversion, public and private, two hundred years later. People in East Anglian pubs were still singing songs of the Napoleonic wars, or even older and more mysterious pieces of magic and terror, as late as the 1950s, when by which time any relevance to the singers' pesonal experience was long gone.

To make a similar claim for 'Johnny B. Goode', you'd have to imagine a future counterpart of Cecil Sharp or Jim Carroll finding people who not only remembered the song but could sing all of its verses (and remember those 18th century songs had many more verses) without any kind of prompt, in 2158. And for that to have happened in a world without sound recordings. And for all of those singers to be using subtly (or even wildly) different versions of the words and tune.

Blandiver wrote:
"I'm using Folk to mean The Revival. I think it's not unreasonable to see it as unbroken continuum from the early years of the 20th century to the present day."

In that case you seem - in comments such as "it seems to be the aim of Folk to filter out what it sees as the 'pure stuff'" - to be assuming that there's been no evolution in thinking over a period of 100 years: between Sharp and his followers on the one hand, and A. L. Lloyd, Steve Roud, Georgina Boyes on the other. Rather difficult to sustain!

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: theleveller
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 08:36 AM

"Flawed maybe, but neither S or A., but arrived at after a great deal of personal experience,"

Well, perhaps, but if, to continue my religious analogy, that committee was the Synod of Folk, setting the parameters of orthodoxy, then there will always be a Martin Luther nailing his articles to the cathedral door, to say nothing of the vast array of Ranters, Quakers, Muggletonians and Fifth Monarchists eager to turn the world upside down. And, of course, there will also be what I seem to be becoming: the folk agnostics and athiests, Perhaps, to plagiarise Mr Lennon, it would be better if we could

Imagine there's no folk songs,
It's easy if you try
Just lots of people singing
Great songs they can't define....

"The kind of songs that folk revivalists have generally concentrated on are a bit different, though. These were songs - many of which actually were the popular songs of the 18th century or before - that took such a hold on the populace that they were still being used for diversion, public and private, two hundred years later."

Yes, of course, but in 200 years' time you'll proably still find people singing 'There'll be Bluebirds Over the White Cliffs of Dover' still oblivious to the fact there have never been bluebirds in the UK.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Ripov (not at home)
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 09:17 AM

How is it that so many who wish to imprison "folk" music so tightly that it can't turn round, are content with "pop" music being undefined? Which of course it isn't. Ask one of the "youngsters" whose absence is discussed elsewhere. I'm sure you'll be told firmly that many tunes/songs you've mentioned are not "pop". My kids and grandkids call me many names for using the term so loosely. Try it youselves at home!

And if "pop" music is more loosely defined as "that produced/distributed by the music industry", (pace Jim Carroll) what do we call the vast amount of music (that the musically illiterate, never mind "folkies", would never class as "folk" music) written and played by (inter alia) young musicians (the ones who don't go to folk clubs or sessions), and played in pubs and clubs to the delight of their peers?

Tirade over.

But of course what is actually being discussed is "popular" music, that is to say, the music of the people; and how could we ever think that "folk" music had its roots in music and song that ordinary people enjoyed, and even joined in with?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 09:19 AM

So.......can a song that was written and defined as a pop song or 'rock 'n roll' ever become considered traditional. And, if so, what would it take? And finally.....any examples of songs that have met this (or are meeting this) criteria?

Oh Suzanna! q.e.d.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 09:50 AM

to be assuming that there's been no evolution in thinking over a period of 100 years: between Sharp and his followers on the one hand, and A. L. Lloyd, Steve Roud, Georgina Boyes on the other.

I said continuum, rather than consistency. Of course there's been an evolution within the movement itself, but it's essentially unchanged in terms of its social-class & its relationship to the folk-caste proper. This is stated with depressing clarity Georgina Boye's Imagined Village whilst Harker's Fakesong simply tells it like it is too, and I dare say you'll find it in the Ladybird History of Music too which even carries an illustration of Sharp's epiphany in the green house. As I say there's no difference here between Sharps parlour arrangements and the more robust renderings of more earnest Traddies such as Bellamy or Michael Grosvenor Myer, neither of whom are exactly men of the sod. The Folk Veneer is still very much one of an academic elite, in which we refer to songs by their Roud Numbers. As I said in recent review of the Roud-complied VOTP volume:

...the academic aura of VOTP [....] is (I insist) not only anathema to the working-class craft & cunning of the men and women who created the songs in the first place, but is entirely incompatible with the earthy vernacular realism of their subject matter.

This is, to myself at least, the essence of the Folk Revival as an echo of the UK class-system, whatever it's political or philosophical aspirations might be otherwise. Right or Left, it makes no difference; it is still born of the very social priviledge it perpetuates to this day in the VOTP series, the Folk Degree Course or general middle-classness of the scene as a whole. The more middle class the Folk Club, the more Traditional it's likely to be. We've got Folk Clubs over here which are so working-class Traditional Songs are anathema.

Are we downhearted??

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: theleveller
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 10:05 AM

"Are we downhearted??"

Well, no - but it may be that, having seen the fate of both albatross and ancient mariner, we will wake the morrow-morn sadder, if not wiser (wo)men.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 10:34 AM

"I said continuum, rather than consistency."

I know what you said, but in making bald statements about this monolith that you call 'Folk' decreeing this or that, or wilfully ignoring working-class culture, or whatever, you are asking us to believe that ideas haven't evolved in the slightest.

"Harker's Fakesong simply tells it like it is"

'Fakesong' contains much interesting information, especially concerning the early ballad collectors and their sources, and it was no doubt a necessary corrective to lazy thinking. However, any kind of critical reading of the book reveals exactly the same kind of wishful-thinking and inconsistency that Harker accused the folk revivalists of. More knowledgable people than me (e.g. the editor of the New Penguin Book) scarcely take it seriously.

"...its social-class & its relationship to the folk-caste proper."

Some of the most detailed descriptions of the social role of folk songs in a rural community were, of course, written by Bob Copper, who was from exactly that community. But you knew that already.

"in 200 years' time you'll proably still find people singing 'There'll be Bluebirds Over the White Cliffs of Dover'"

Really? I asked my son, just for interest, whether he was familiar with the song. Yes, he said, from documentaries about World War 2. Did he know the words? None, beyond the title. If you'd asked me, I could have stretched as far as "Tomorrow, just you wait and see", and that would have been that. Maybe people will still be listening to those WW2 documentaries and hearing 'Bluebirds' in 200 years time (if there's anyone left alive), but 'knowing the song' in the way that a Lancastrian woman was able to remember 17 verses of 'Lord Bateman' in 1973 is a different thing altogether.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 10:36 AM

'Guest' was me, forgetting to check the cookie jar.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: theleveller
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 11:10 AM

"but 'knowing the song' in the way that a Lancastrian woman was able to remember 17 verses of 'Lord Bateman' in 1973 is a different thing altogether. "

"A" woman. One swallow, as they say.....

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 12:21 PM

For JimC-when I said that thing about songs starting, it would have been more useful had I said that each of those sources gave a reference point from which one, if they were of a mind, could view changes, dissemination, adaptation, and such things.

Larry Saidman--your long post above asked a good number of questions, any one of which would make an excellent research topic. With music, as with most things, it takes much less time to ask a question than to answer it.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Bettynh
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 12:22 PM

Hmm, threads like this one keep me coming back to Mudcat.

For your consideration (and outrage, I'm sure):

Shape-note singing sessions can be found in several areas of this country. All from a few books.


New England contra dance   Every second Saturday.


Talking about Doc Watson brings up lots of stuff - he was trained to tune pianos, grew up where people sang traditional ballads, made a living playing dances (traditional fiddle tunes on electric guitar), and had the voice and technique to sing and play whatever he wanted to. What he got paid for varied by time and place.


Johnny Cash: "Hurt" Again, he grew up, then married into, traditional singing (at least, the Carters were collectors of and benefactors from Appalachain song). By the end of his life, he was able to sing whatever he wanted to, and make it part of his music.

We don't have one tradition here in the USA, so it seems insulting to me to talk about restricting singing (or instrumental music) to a single profile.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 12:35 PM

"One swallow, as they say..... "

Well, by 1973 we were well into Autumn, if not Winter, as far as folk song (in the old sense) is concerned. On the other hand, hundreds of independent versions of 'Lord Bateman' were still doing the rounds in various parts of the English-speaking world in the early part of the 20th century, which isn't bad for a song that was at least 150 years old by 1900.

The point I'm trying to make is that songs of recent composition, whether 'Johnny B. Goode' or 'Bluebirds', are never likely to 'become folksongs' in the way that 'Lord Bateman' did, because we just don't live in that kind of culture any more. 'Oh Susannah' probably has 'become a folksong' as Uncle Dave O suggested, but then that was written in 1847.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 01:43 PM

Interesting that Sam Lee is still turning up new stuff...

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 01:44 PM

Why does it matter that a Lancastrian woman was able to remember 17 verses of 'Lord Bateman' in 1973?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 02:40 PM

"Why does it matter that a Lancastrian woman was able to remember 17 verses of 'Lord Bateman' in 1973?"

Because I've been arguing that only a tiny minority of people know even one verse of 'Johnny B. Goode', a song that's only 60-odd years old and which many of us have heard many times over on radio or TV ads. That Lancastrian woman was remembering in considerable detail a song that, at the time the collector Fred Hamer visited her, was over two hundred years old, at the very least.

She'd learned it from her elder sister eighty years previously, at a time when old songs were still being passed on from one generation to the next. Meanwhile there were hundreds of other instances of people in different localities being able to remember their own version of 'Lord Batemen' - most probably (we don't know in every case but it's a reasonable guess) as a result of it having been passed on within families or maybe peer groups.

The point being that, in a culture in which entertainment was largely self-generated - i.e. people singing for themselves - those people got to know their songs a lot better than people in our present-day culture, where most of us absorb our entertainment ready-made. Those people in the 19th century and before knew and loved their songs well enough to pass them on to their kids. How many parents today are singing their children to sleep with 'Johnny B. Goode', 'Yellow Submarine' or any of the other usual candidates for 'modern folk songs'?

So, I suggest, 'Lord Bateman' is a folk song (in the old sense, I stress once again) whereas 'Johnny B. Goode' is, not one now and unlikely to become one. Does that make sense?

"Interesting that Sam Lee is still turning up new stuff... "

Very interesting and inspiring. Mind you, Cecil Sharp wouldn't have expected Lancastrian women to be singing 17 verses of 'Lord Bateman' in 1973, never mind travellers in 2012. His predictions of the imminent extinction of the oral tradition were inaccurate in terms of timescale. A few pockets still survive, and it's no surprise that's happened in certain traveller communities. Thomas McCarthy is bloody good, too.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 03:03 PM

One of the many things that has occurred in the last century or so that has stemmed the flow of oral tradition is the acceleration of fashion change, mainly due to modern technology. Something comes into fashion and rapidly disappears as something else comes along to replace it. Consequently only the very memorable items take a hold whereas prior to this they had much longer to take a hold.

An example might be the minstrel troupes that started c1840, were the bees' knees for decades and didn't actually die out until the more PC 1960s.

However there is still a strong oral traditon of sorts with song. Generally only 'folk singers' and their children would count 'folk songs' in this. The typical oral repertoire contains community songs, children's rhymes, football chants, pop songs from parents' youth/own youth, TV ad jingles, school songs, hymns, popular carols

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Larry The Radio Guy
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 03:04 PM

Brian, what you say makes a lot of sense. And it complements the points that Jim Carroll and others are making. Certainly that Lancastrian woman has truly adapted that song (Lord Bateman) and it's exciting that she would bring it so 'close' to her.....and it obviously has a lot of meaning for her.   Even though that meaning may be more related to the context (i.e a song that was in the family) than to the content (the actual story).

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 03:05 PM

For Jim

I must not make sweeping statements as fact when they are only opinion. Cut and Paste x99.

Ta, Jim.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 03:09 PM

Speak to you later - bed time - bloody aepnia
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Larry The Radio Guy
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 03:17 PM

Stim, you mention that it takes more time to ask a question than to answer it...particularly related to this thread.

Yet.... looking at this very interesting thread (I'm with you, bettynh, when you say that threads like this keep bringing you back to mudcat).........I realize that I've probably asked the wrong question.

I'm really wanting to understand the 'living tradition' of music and that whole process and how we, the 'common people' put that into practice.

So for me to use terms like 'traditional' and 'folk music'....which are terms studied by musicologists and other academics, and expect people knowledgable in this field to make this 'living tradition' process lucid is probably not realistic.

The closest thing I can find is that Lord Bateman example....and it reminds me of how my father-in-law would take such pride in reciting, so passionately, certain poems like "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner". He grasped it so close to his soul; this was no commercial music (or poetry) industry putting words in his mouth.

And I think there are some similar (but different) processes happening today.   The songs I sang to my son when he was a baby. The songs that are sung in folk clubs, pubs, or legion halls that get people singing along.   No, they're not traditional in the academic sense.   But somehow they come close to people's hearts (if not their souls).

So what I think I need to do is start another thread focusing on what makes a song last. And what recent popular, rock'n roll, country, or so-called 'folk' songs seem to be on their way to becoming songs that will become part of such a singing 'tradition' (using the other definition of tradition, rather than the one embraced by musicologists).

Thanks everybody for your input....and Joe, I'm OK with closing this thread now (unless others want to keep it open).

-Larry

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 03:27 PM

Good luck with your new thread, Larry. I think you've hit the nail on the head.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Bettynh
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 03:29 PM

"One of the many things that has occurred in the last century or so that has stemmed the flow of oral tradition is the acceleration of fashion change, mainly due to modern technology. Something comes into fashion and rapidly disappears as something else comes along to replace it. Consequently only the very memorable items take a hold whereas prior to this they had much longer to take a hold."

Yes, but it doesn't disappear anymore. It just gets archived on youtube. My kids can listen to the same recorded tunes that I did when I was small, and wax cylinders of 19th century music hall music is there, too. Currently, string band music is rather popular (Cornbread and Butter Beans)

Original archived recorded material is a click away. The Bristol Sessions

Somewhere out there, perhaps someone is learning Lord Bateman from Elizabeth Laprelle, who currently makes a living singing it (does that make it a pop song?)

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 03:55 PM

Thanks for your answer, Brian. It's an interesting theory, but you haven't provided any evidence that it's true. l.

From what I've seen over the years, the opposite might in fact be true.

Modern technology allows people to listen to the music that they like much more often, and much more intensely, than was ever possible in the past. This makes it possible for them to memorize much more, and much faster, than every before.

The other night, a friend took me to a dance club (it has been twenty years, at least, since I'd been in one) and I heard the dancers singing along, word for word, with recordings that were so fast that I couldn't even follow them.

More remarkable, there were frequent occasions where the DJ, though use of technology that I have only heard about, cut out the vocal tracks, leaving the MC and the crowd singing to the instrumental track. The MC seemed to be improvising, as well, but I wasn't familiar enough with the material to know.

Something else that I experienced, a number of years ago, still lingers with me to this day, for similar reasons. I was attending a concert by a fairly popular "Alternative Rock" band. It was one of the first concerts in a tour supporting their new album, which had been out for about a week.   I felt a bit on top of things because I'd gotten the album and listened to it a few times.

The crowd sang along with every song, including everything from the new album.

I was surprised, but not as much as I was a few weeks later, when I heard my 8 year old sing the entire album acapella.

So, Brian, before I believe you,I would very much like to see some hard data.

I am also curious to know how many people day know "Lord Bateman", and how many of them learned it by listening over and over to recordings.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 03:59 PM

"The typical oral repertoire contains community songs, children's rhymes, football chants, pop songs from parents' youth/own youth, TV ad jingles, school songs, hymns, popular carols"

Indeed Steve, the oral tradition can never be declared dead until people have finally stopped singing 'Happy Birthday to You'. But... Hymns? My kids (19 and 25) don't know a single hymn and would struggle with carols beyond 'Jingle Bells' (chorus only) and just possibly the first couple of line of 'Away in a Manger'. TV ads? I could reel off quite a few ad jingles from the days of my childhood, but those will die with our generation.

It's changing all the time - what was true for you and me isn't necessarily true for our kids. Children's rhymes? Yes, still going strong, apparently. Football chants? Well, I have an interest here as a 1970s fanatic who still gets to a few games a season. I know that new chants are still being composed, and that several of the old ones are still going strong. But the singers are fewer in number and the repertoire smaller. Deafening tannoy music drowns out a lot of the attempts at singing - even at a small club like Stockport County, never mind Old Trafford. And when the Stretford End is still half empty ten minutes before kick-off (compared to the days when it was packed an hour and a half beforehand and the empty time was filled by singing) then you know things are different.

There's no reason or remote possibility that things will or should stay the same, but there's no point in trying to pretend that nothing's changed.

Incidentally, to Larry Saidman, thanks for coming back to the thread to comment, and for having started it off without an existing axe to grind.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 04:44 PM

Speaking of "Oh Susannah", I ran into a guy about 35 years old who thought Neil Young wrote it.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 05:22 PM

Brian,
Whilst agreeing that things are changing as I said, the terrace chants have a knack of reappearing. The canned music is a damned nuisance to us, but the away fans still are very vocal at games where they're concentrated into a relatively small area. And I agree entirely that there's no point in pretending that nothing's changed. I thought that's what I was trying to say.

The carols surprise me. Apparently we don't sing in schools any more like we used to, and nor do we need to go Christmas carolling door to door like we used to as kids. These are some of the other changes, not necessarily down to rapidly expanding technology.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 05:30 PM

On the topic of how the way songs are transmitted has changed, but transmission still occurs, I think may be worth reproducing this long-since post of mine on this topic. I hope its relevance to this aspect of this discussion will be apparent ~~

Subject: RE: Origins: Black Cat Piddled in the White Cat's Eye
From: MtheGM - PM
Date: 26 Sep 09 - 05:46 AM

BTW — we recently had a long thread on what was the Folk Process, or whether it even existed. Well, isn't this an example of the way it can work?

Consider - I learned a children's song in 1956 from a friend who remembered it from his early E London days. Two years later it took the fancy of Sandy Paton who became a friend while he was visiting London. Exactly 40 years later he posted it, most courteously attributed to me, as part of a thread about its tune. This thread got refreshed 10 years later, & the words caught the eye of Joy in Australia, who started this thread about it, ref-ing Sandy's 11-yr-old post. I saw this & revealed myself as Sandy's acknowledged source, & named my source;, which brought a response from Hootenanny, who comes from the same part of London, with a recognisable variant of the same song.

I mean, the Folk Process might not work quite as it did when Kidson & Gavin Greig, Sharp & the Hammonds, Moeran & RVW, were all at work. But doesn't this show that modern means of communication, like The Web e.g., have their part to play also?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 05:36 PM

Somehow I missed the start of this thread...I could have saved you all this debate.

Of course pop song can become trad... it takes 84 years, 3 months and 9 days to qualify. Then someone submits it to the "Committee of Modal Folkers", who analyze it for 3 months and vote in an alley behind a random pub in England. Then they go inside, sing 3 versions, and announce it as 'trad'... then the audience throws rotten vegetables and/or nods seriously.

Over the next year, the committee's opinion (liberally paraphrased) is passed on to OTHER pubs & clubs, argued over, transmitted to America, where they have totally forgotten the original, and finally someone starts thread #2933744999336 at Mudcat, where it is linked to 984 other threads and bandied about in very clever rhetoric until it no one remembers what the question was.

Then, if some young girl finds the words in he grandfathers notebook and make a recording of it to one of the 9 Irish tunes, it magically becomes TRAD.

The process starts now.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 05:49 PM

Bill,
I find your assertion of '84 years, 3 months and 9 days' to be somewhat overstated. Everybody here knows it's actually 84 years, 3 months and 8 days. Please keep up!

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 07:04 PM

Steve... I must not have allowed for all the leap years. I'll recalculate....

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 07:18 PM

Brian Peters: Because I've been arguing that only a tiny minority of people know even one verse of 'Johnny B. Goode', a song that's only 60-odd years old and which many of us have heard many times over on radio or TV ads.

On the other hand, there are multitudes of people who know all the verses of a song like "Hotel California" which is over 40 years old. Not only know the lyrics, but can play it, in several guitar parts, and also often add their own improvisations. Here in Sakhalin (Russian Far East) I started the 7th-fret intro in an informal singaround in a pub last Sunday and after one bar another guitarist was finger-picking the open-string chord sequence while a 3rd was strumming the same. At least a dozen people, mostly Russians, joined in with the vocals and Grisha (the finger picker) did some nice improvisation around the theme at the end.

I've seen the same happen at several open mics in England. At one in Axminster we had 6 guitars playing various parts and improvisations, and 3 female vocalists in their early 20s singing it (generation transfer).

So maybe "Johnny B Goode" is a poor choice as a "possibility"?


Those people in the 19th century and before knew and loved their songs well enough to pass them on to their kids. How many parents today are singing their children to sleep with 'Johnny B. Goode', 'Yellow Submarine' or any of the other usual candidates for 'modern folk songs'?

Not "singing them to sleep" but I'd suggest, for certain songs, a lot more than you'd think are passed on. OK, "Hotel California" may be over-done, but it's certainly been passed down at least one generation. As have songs like "Wish You Were Here"....again, something I can start in almost any "open" pub session and have 20-somethings join in with both the vocals and the guitar parts. Others in the frame would include "Streets of London", "Mr Tambourine Man" (plus several other Dylan songs), some Crosby Stills Nash and Young songs etc. I've heard several under-25s doing Bowie's "Space Oddity" recently...usually with sections of the (predominantly young) audience joining in, and knowing all the words.

And "new" songs in the "folk idiom, such as Dirty Old Town, Fiddler's Green, etc, are sung widely (often by people who believe they're "trad", and with changed words...eg most people sing "gasworks wall" rather than "gasworks croft").

So no, I don't believe "Johnny B. Goode" will ever become "trad", but I can imagine many other "pop" songs of the last 50 years still being sung and passed down through generations a hundred years from now.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: johncharles
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 12:07 AM

I was in a music session a few weeks ago and someone sang Running Bear. I realised I knew every word even though it was 40 years since I last heard it. Give it a few more years and I will pass it on as a song learned at my mothers knee.
john

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 02:11 AM

I had a similar experience with that song, johncharles. At a gig, many years ago, I got "I'll bet you don't know this one", and, to their surprise, and mine, I did. I'd never played it before, nor since. It's one of those songs.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: theleveller
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 04:12 AM

"it reminds me of how my father-in-law would take such pride in reciting, so passionately, certain poems like "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner". "

Interesting point Larry. My father could also recite long tracts of poetry, much of which he'd learnt from his schoolmaster's recitation at the age of 12. Funnily enough I, too, enjoy reciting those poems and many others. So does the 'folk process' apply to poetry? Good news for those who can't sing!

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 04:54 AM

I grew up with my grandfather reciting everything from Kipling's Barrack Room Ballads he learned in the army in India to Tommy Armstrong songs & Geordie Broon of Backworth. Not sure if he ever changed a word, so maybe the Folk Process doesn't apply here?

Somethings never change; they are proudly part of the heritage of a community and simply held in trust as comfort in the face of an ever-changing world beset by death, decay, disease and general entropy, which to many is what Tradition is I suppose, i.e. an affirmation of permanance & continuity. Records are part of this in that they set the definitive and at least give the illusion of permanance. Frank Zappa notes that it was very much part of the tradition of bands in the late 50's / early 60s to stick as close as possible to the recorded arrangements. Those who did it best got the gigs.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 05:33 AM

Phew, such a lot of interesting stuff on this thread. I'm learning a lot.

Let's start with Blandiver's "Somethings never change; they are proudly part of the heritage of a community and simply held in trust as comfort in the face of an ever-changing world beset by death, decay, disease and general entropy, which to many is what Tradition is I suppose, i.e. an affirmation of permanance & continuity."

Beautifully put, Mr. B. Not for nothing are those communities transplanted by free will or force, to hostile environments, amongst the most fertile in terms of traditional song and music: the Acadians, expelled from the Canadian maritimes to the steaming swamps of the Deep South; the Appalachian mountaineers, trying to hack out a meagre living on poor soil, in extreme weather, cut off from 'civilization' with potential threats all around them. Perhaps you overstate slightly with the single word 'never'. Things do change even in communities like those, but nonetheless the pride in heritage remains strong. (More later)

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 07:05 AM

Never

Well, you know my feelings on Organic Change, I Ching & The Tao. The entire universe is in flux & flow for good (we plough the fields & scatter) or ill (fast falls the eventide) so there is a tendency to dream of something that Never changes. Maybe all human art is to move against nature to ensure solidity & permanance? At Stonehenge, Avebury & Thornborough our forebears were creating order and relative permanance on a scale which was, in effect, greater than nature. Wyrd will out however, no matter how well-wrought our walls, but for a lifetime, or several lifetimes, there will be at least something that will seem everlasting even as everything changes around it.

So Time that is o'er-kind
To all that be,
Ordains us e'en as blind,
As bold as she:
That in our very death,
And burial sure,
Shadow to shadow, well persuaded, saith,
"See how our works endure!"

Subject: RE: Can a pop song bJOHNecome traditional?
From: johncharles
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 07:13 AM

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
John

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 08:12 AM

We really don't seem to have moved away from the repetition = tradition stance that has blighted all these discussions and obviously will continue to do so for some time to come.
"Folk is a subject of fetishism for a crypto-religious elite that doesn't really connect with the 'real world'"
Ten years ago, when I retired I was full of enthusism for publishing - a collection of Travellers songs maybe, or a book on Walter Pardon, and certainly an oral autobiography based on the hundred or so tapes we recorded from Mikeen McCarthy the Traveller ballad seller.
It's snideswipes such as this that have largely persuaded me that it is really not worth the effort and it would be far more beneficial to leave it all on the shelf and let posterity decide.
When this comes wrapped in verbal self-abuse aimed (as far as I can make out when I manage to cut my way through the clever-clever verbal undergrowth) at tearing down something others have done without offering a trace of your own work, it doesn't even have a great deal of entertainment value
All very depressing
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 09:37 AM

Jim - I'm not tearing anything down just reporting on what I see to be the case. It's what Folk is - it's a verty precious specialism about which the real world couldn't give a damn one way or the other. Even most Folkies I meat couldn't give two hoots about Traditional song. I believe it's now the fashion for Folkies to call non-Folkies Muggles; whilst this is true of other specialisms too, I find it rather depressing especially when the culture of Real Venacular Popular Music Making is so vigorous in a muliplicity of idioms - even something called 'Folk' which no Folkie would ever call Folk, which goes back to Tom Wilson turning Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel onto electricity by overdubbing their music with rock music - and that's years before we get to the doldrums of UK Folk Rock.

Ultimately discussions like this on the nature of Traditional Music as hermetically sealed sacred art entirely separate from the rest of Popular Culture just serve to demonstate the extent of an elitism which is part and parcel of The Revival. Myself, I reckon that's a massive part of its appeal - like those earnest Traddies in singarounds who introduce a ballad by quoting both its Child & Roud Number. Even I refer to songs by their Child Number largely in deference to an academic tradition I'm still in awe of.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Tootler
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 10:07 AM

Having just read that last post I can unerstand why Jim Carroll feels depressed

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 10:23 AM

Tootler - it's petty little snipes like that that depress me. Either discuss it in the good spirit of the discussion, or don't bother.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 10:52 AM

"repetition = tradition"

I'm with Jim on this one. Neil Armstrong's famous words "one small step for a man, etc." are replayed endlessly and are recognizable to millions, but that doesn't make them traditional, nor folklore. If, on the other hand, I were to take a hypothetical young son out on a regular walk involving some treacherous stepping stones, each time encouraging him to be bold with the words, "It's just one small step for a man", and, twenty years in the future, he were to encourage his own son with the same phrase, then it would have become folklore, at least on the family level.

Further up the thread, Stim asks me to provide 'hard evidence' of my previous argument that modern songs are unlikely to become traditional in the way that songs of the 18th century did. Leaving aside the temptation to point out that Mudcat is a place where everyone else bandies around personal opinions without feeling the need for the slightest corroboration, I would say this. Presumably, Stim, you're not asking for hard evidence of the transmission of what I would call traditional songs? If you were, there's plenty available, from biographical booklets accompanying CDs of traditional singers released by Topic, Musical Tradtions, Veteran etc., to the aforementioned New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs, to Bob Copper's A Song for Every Season, to the personal account of Carrie Grover, etc. etc.

If, on the other hand, you're asking me to demonstrate that songs no longer get passed on (always difficult to prove a negative!), well I'm sorry, but I'm not about to undertake a scientific survey for the sake of a Mudcat discussion. However, what I'm saying is based partly on personal, local and anecdotal experience, partly on the kind of press stories we hear from time to time regarding the decline in parents singing to their children. Like these, trawled from a very quick Google search:

Nursery rhymes out of fashion?

Shy parents afraid to sing nursery rhymes

Children don't know nursery rhymes

Your examples of people singing along at concerts or dance clubs are interesting (particularly the eight-year-old who can sing an entire album accapella), but not especially surprising: I knew by heart the lyrics to many of the records I bought in my teens (in fact I still do), and we've all seen footage of the mainstage crowd at Glastonbury singing along with Coldplay or whoever.

But the 'hard data' that you really need to provide here is that baby boomers raised in the rock'n'roll years are actually passing 1950s or 60s songs on to their offspring by singing to them (as opposed to digging out Chuck Berry videos on Youtube and saying "just listen to this great old song"). And then that those offspring remember the songs well enough to pass them on to their own kids. Or, alternatively, that the Rogers & Hammerstein songs that my parents' generation knew, have been passed orally through my generation and on to the next one. Until you can prove that, you haven't demonstrated that (relatively) modern popular songs have 'become traditional' in the way that 'Lord Bateman' did.

To Rob Naylor: You're right: 'Johnny B. Goode' isn't the greatest candidate in this discussion, not least because it depends for much of its musical interest on a driving R'n'R arrangement, the melody in itself not being especially memorable. I was fascinated by the account of guitarists in Sakhalin playing 'Hotel California' (how our world has shrunk!) but you are talking about guitarists - a small percentage of any population - rather than unaccompanied singers. The whole point about the singing tradition, or whatever we choose to call it, is that it was open to anyone, not just people with the money to afford an instrument and the time to practise it; the evidence I've seen suggests that singing was once very widespread indeed. So again we aren't comparing like with like. It's a bit like saying that traditional singing goes on, because a small community of folk music hobbyists have recreated a version of it in microcosm - and I'm with Blandiver in his opinions of that.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: johncharles
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 10:52 AM

Sales of folk music in the UK last year were up 20% from 2010.

The success of Brit Award winning Laura Marling as well as the likes of the US musician Gillian Welch are behind the boost in sales.

According to the British Phonographic Industry, despite the huge lift in sales, folk music still only accounted for 1.6% of album sales in the UK in 2011. Other artists which helped boost folk music sales were Bellowhead and Daniel O'Donnell.
I guess that the more "traditional" end of the spectrum accounts for only a small fraction of these sales.
Folk is a minority occupation to pretend otherwise is self-delusion.
It is a great hobby,making music with friends,and entertaining like minded folk. The error is in trying to maintain that it is somehow central to British culture and feeling depressed when the vast majority no not share this view. John

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 11:14 AM

Deja vu strikes again.....and again.....!

I seem to remember, even with my senility, at a similar point in previous discussions chipping in that we would be best treating what happens today as separate traditions from those that happened a century and more ago. Yes they have similarities, but they also have drastic differences.

The Everlasting Circle, isn't that a folk song?