The demise of Folk Music

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: steve t
Date: 24 Mar 98 - 02:37 AM

Steve Earle once said folk music was the music people wrote and sang themselves about their own lives. He claimed that the only healthy folk scene was the hip-hop music of the ghettos.

Ok. That's one label. I don't agree, but sometimes it does seem to me that most of the songs I sing are evasive -- that they give me a chance to express emotions without telling the full story.

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: andy
Date: 24 Mar 98 - 05:19 PM

I think the name folk is getting a bad name with all the boring lilith fair musicians. Real folk has flava. For example Bob Dylan, robert johnson, son house, woodie guthrie, G-love and special sauce.

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: Bruce O.
Date: 24 Mar 98 - 06:14 PM

I once heard it stated the Utah Phillips had defined folksings as those that sang by ear through the nose. I don't think he'd heard Jeannie Robertson, Ewan MacColl, or A. L. Lloyd.

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: Bill D
Date: 24 Mar 98 - 09:05 PM

steve t has expressed very well a couple of the things that bother me about what music has become...people used to sing a lot about their 'life'...now many songs are, as he says, about emotion that doesn't tell much story...(one friend of mine refers to something he calls "young girls singing their diary". My own favorite description is 'navel-gazing' songs. Another I have heard is 'the beingness of being'...the themes are simply different than the 'external' subject matter that used to be so common.

None of this solves the problems we have been discussing, but it is one way to explain that there ARE differences.

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From:
Date: 25 Mar 98 - 10:11 AM

Folk music is music that people use while doing something else at the same time: traditionially, worshipping, dancing, eating, or making the music at the same time as listening to it. Hence the same song is a folk song in church and an art song in the concert hall. It is an art song if I sit in my living room and do nothing but bathe in the music of my CD. If I'm vacuuming the living room at the same time, it's folk music. Muzak is folk music if used as background music in restaurants.

Sometimes when people speak of the decline of folk music, they are speaking not so much as a loss of repertoire, but of the loss of captive audiences. Many of the old songs were learned of old simply because singing was on of few available forms of recreation. Now the cultivation of the old songs is an individual accomplishment, bought by means of an investment of money and effort. This change is a result of greater individual freedom. I don't think I would give up my freedom even for the coziness of a homogeneous traditional small-town culture.

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: Richard
Date: 25 Mar 98 - 08:33 PM

I am not sure either that there has been a demise of folk music, except in the popular culture sense, ie Kingston Trio and PPM. WEe host a house concert series and the majority of the music is what I would define as "folk", or roots or traditional or country or....

Bill D. mentioned that folk songs used to be "about life" rather than a song fo a diary. Agreed. If you want the "about life" thread try cowboy poetry. Maybe that's where it has gone, or shifted, as it is certainly becoming popular.

Alos have to look at demographics and the shifting age of those who listened to "folk"

If there has been a demise I would put part of the blame on the folk police---those who berated festival organizers with charges of not booking the "proper" acts. Those who would say, "you really mustn't sing that song that way" or "I have a much better version than that", those who so narrowly defined "folk" that it simply became a pain in the ass to listen to their unaccompanied wailings of some obscure English ballad that no longer had any relevance to today's life.

That being said I still like a cappella ballads, but it can all get to be a bit much with some folks.

I could go on. What most folks want is to be ENTERTAINED with music. Nothing wrong with that. That's what has kept it alive, that and folks like Bruce O and Mudcat who keep the music acessible.

Cheers, Richard

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: Earl
Date: 26 Mar 98 - 11:20 AM

The problem with folk music as popular entertainment is that audiences seem to behave with a herd mentality. Maybe it's always been like that but it seems worse today. People without a personal connection to a musical style don't trust their own ears and wait until the mass media give them permission to like it. It's ok to like Robert Johnson but people glaze over if you mention his contemoraries.

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: Frank in the swamps
Date: 26 Mar 98 - 05:12 PM

What Earl said is something that has bugged the bejesus outta me for ages, people who have never listened to either Mozart or Ellington will nod and say "Oh yeah, geniuses" but they're not expressing an opinion, just aping one. These same people often regard folk music as less valuable because there seems to be an assumption that there is a certain cap, or top level of musicianship which folk musicians are cabable of. It's true that more sophisticated forms of music require a minimum level of skill, you can't do an adequate version of the "Moonlight Sonata" it had better be good or it won't fly. And you can do an adequate rendition of "Old Smokey" but there is no ceiling on artistry just because the music is folk. Too many people don't trust their own response to music. They just wanna give the "right" answer and not be laughed at.

Frank i.t.s.

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: Art Thieme
Date: 26 Mar 98 - 10:10 PM

When young, I did look to the songs for the "real life" I'd find within. A bit vicarious, but a grand way to time travel and to be inside the folks of another era and know some of their experience then. Of course, the real downside of that other time was (thankfully) not a part of the deal. I'm thinking of their diseases as well as the other hardships of their lives because they had none of our conveniences.

NOW, six decades (almost) into this adventure, I don't need vicarious troubles.Real stuff in moving, enlightening and wondrously horrific too---SUBLIME. And I love the old songs that still transport me miraculously. But I've no need to wallow in the detritis like I thought I must (in order to learn about life) when I was 20 years old.

So---has folk music demised? I doubt it! We've changed though---and that's cool. The music will ALWAYS BE THERE for those who wish to venture off the beaten path in order to find it. The quest IS the grail. The more things change, the more they get different.

Yes, it's the loneliness that's inherant in the demise of anything that seems to worry so much. But the loneliness of the long distance runner can, truly, be exhilerating.

Art

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: Linda Bryant McSheffrey
Date: 27 Mar 98 - 06:53 AM

RE: Art Thieme's comment to Ed from Cape Cod about being grateful for all the folk music in his area:

I'm also from the Boston area...Art, you're right...I don't really appreciate how wonderful the "folk music" scene is here until I hear a discussion like this. I live in a small town just south of Boston (Avon) and I can find folk music just a block away on weekends (traditional folk music at that) and there's a new church coffeehouse almost next door to me. I wish everyone could spend some time in this area to see that folk music is alive and well.

But, Art, do we really drive all that bad???

Linda

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: Art Thieme
Date: 27 Mar 98 - 11:36 AM

It's just those damn rotaries and the fact that Beantown roads were put down on cattle trails that make it so impossible to drive easily there. Got so lost last time I almost missed my gig for FSGB.

Give my regards to S.Alarik & S. Mrozak!

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: Earl
Date: 27 Mar 98 - 12:04 PM

And of course the rudeness is legenary. A couple of years ago one driver was driven to kill another with a crossbow.

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: Barry Finn
Date: 27 Mar 98 - 11:12 PM

Being Boston born & bred, I guess I'm out of the demise loop, been around folk music here since the mid 60's, I've never wanted, I'd say San Francisco was on the same level, but I'd be going back over 15 yrs. From freinds it's still very healthy there too. The Boston Globe had a headline article in it's calendar section yesterday, ( a major national paper giving folk music a headline plus 3 pages) "Catching The Folk Wave" by Scott Alarik. It goes on saying 'Boston is the healthiest folk scene in the country with over 200 folk venues, the only 7 day a week, all day folk format in the country (WUMB-FM), & more folk air time than place in the country. It continues to say that this (at least in this area) dwafts anything that happened in the 60's, the last great folk revival'. At one point I counted 22 sessions a week, for someone coming to visit. As for our cow paths, Art once we get you here we don't like to see you go, an old trick to keep the music going. Don't know Scott but I'll pass along a hi to Suzanne for you, she's at NEFFA this year along with mudcatters, Wally Macnow & LaMarca. Sorry there's no demise here, come & stay awhile. Barry

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: Art Thieme
Date: 28 Mar 98 - 03:04 AM

Barry, Howdy,

Don't get me wrong; I loved being in Boston---playing at Passim when Bob Donlon was there. Old Vienna is a grand place. And the FSGB---good folks all. Wish I was there now!

Scott A. is a good buddy---a fine singer as well as writin' for the Globe! Half of my promo packet was written by him! Did a good article in Sing Out about my being with Folk Legacy and Sandy Paton. (The issue with Nancy Griffith on the cover)Now, if he only had a sense of humor...(smile)...Did ya see FARGO?? That's Alerik!! (smile)! Wonderful Minnesota dialect tales!

Ask him about the Minnesota gal who married a Palestinian! Their kid was named Yassir youbetcha!! (Yah, sir)

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: steve t
Date: 28 Mar 98 - 03:56 PM

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: McGrath
Date: 28 Mar 98 - 07:20 PM

I am taken aback by this discussion. I haven't heard that folk songs were in decline.

Quite honestly folk singing is still thriving in Ireland and I just assumed that it was heathy in the USA also.

In fact the only thing that concernd me were that there are so many popularised folk songs in Ireland currently that many old songs are not being sung anymore. That, and the slight decline in unaccompanied singing are (or were) my only concerns regarding folk singing.

I certainly hope that things improve in the USA as I have a great admiration for the great American Folk song Tradition.

Keep the flag flying.

We have a singing club with a recently established web site. Our site lists just some of the other clubs we know and visit regularly. There are many more which we have not listed yet.

Come visit us. We are called the Nenagh Singers Circle and our web site is; http://www.geocities.com/Broadway/Alley/4749/

I have included a live link here --> Nenagh Singers Circle

Regards,

Frank McGrath

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: Art Thieme
Date: 28 Mar 98 - 09:13 PM

Come to think of it,vacuuming is a great thing to sing to---would sound better than the Scottish bagpipes (but not the Irish pipes). A great drone!! (Some might say it sucks though!) SMILE!

Dan Keding has told me that his various trips to England as well as Ireland have been exhilerating precisely because so many young folks are becoming wonderful traditional devotees there! Norma Waterson's daughter (sorry, can't recall her name) is a wonder I hear. It's quite thrilling to see young folks looking to the best parts of the past to find, music and values. Isn't happening here very much! A bit sad, but O.K.! That's life. Wait a bit and it'll change. Like the story about how the Illinois weather changes all the time. A fellow plowing with his prize bulls. One of 'em died of heatstroke and, while he was skinning it, the other one froze to death!

Oh---why was he plowing with his prize bulls?? He didn't want 'em to think life was all romance!

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: T. in Oklahoma
Date: 24 Apr 98 - 04:09 PM

Time to revive this thread. Some of the discussion in the "Bullgine" thread is starting to overlap with this one.

Regardless of how we want to define "folk" music, I think we *might* all be able to agree that

1) much instrumental and vocal music circulates (through writing or through hearing, or both) as one-line melody.

2) much of this music is diatonic, containing no accidentals at all, or none but what would be b-flat if the music were transposed to a staff with a key signature showing the key of C. (That doesn't mean the music itself is in the key of C, just that the staff has no sharps or flats in its key signature.)

3) much of this music starts out in a certain key or mode and stays there throughout.

4) much of the music described in (1) (2) and (3) is used for dancing.

5) much of the dance music referred to in (4) is in identifiable genres such as waltz, two-step, reel, jig, hornpipe, strathspey, march.

Much (but by no means all or even most) of the music referred to as "folk" music is has the features enumerated above.

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: Marc B
Date: 24 Apr 98 - 04:49 PM

The most fascinating phenomenon about the popularity of folk music to me(being in the trad English/Irish tradition) is that in terms of people listening to the music is never fails to be "liked". It ALWAYS hooks people even if they encounter it by chance. Shantey's for example. So in that sense it is intensely mainstream popular. Yet it has never been hugely COMMERCIALLY viable, even in the hootenanny days.

In my experience(since the '60's) the only demise I notice is in the number of venues in which to perform(though it depends on geography). Seattle(my original home) is very healthy on the folk music front. My current home in Dallas is much less so. Just got back from a trip to England where there are pub sings all over the place on a regular basis, both circle and guest singer types. And full of talented singers.

And there are goods and bads to the current Celtic wave. Good in some great talents getting some play(as happened in the blues) like Sharon Shannon. Bad in Celtic getting stuck on the front of any dreck and selling it as folk music. But truth is, folk music is LIVING tradition and so will weave and permutate and wander and mutate as it will. Kind of like these conversations:)

Anyhoo, long may we wave. Marc

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: JB
Date: 26 Apr 98 - 03:14 AM

When I think of folk music, I think of the long refining process a song goes thru by means of the oral tradition. These songs have survived, not just because antiquarians love to study obscure subjects, but because the tradition lives. When you like a song well enough to learn it, and then well enough to perform it in another's hearing, and if they love it well enough to learn it, it keeps on. The songs that last are the ones that mean something to people thru time. Who knows what of the mish-mash of musical styles prevalent now will stand the test of time. A folk song lives not just because someone stands to gain financially but because it strikes a chord(!) in enough people for it to survive.

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: JB
Date: 26 Apr 98 - 03:16 AM

The demise of folk music has been somewhat exaggerated. Thanks for letting me get on the soapbox!

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: MarcB
Date: 26 Apr 98 - 06:08 PM

JB. Really nice thought above. One of the best descriptions I've seen of the reason for it all. Thanks.

Marc

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: aldus
Date: 27 Apr 98 - 09:49 AM

You can"t have the accepted definition of folk music if there are no "Folk". What many contributors seem to want is I9th century people in the late 20th century. I do not believe thast it was rock that killed folk in the sixties, I believe it was this same kind of narrowness of mind that we see in this arguement. Rap may not be your cup of tea but it is far close to the tradition of "Folk" than Annie Defranco is. As For the maidens of Lilith Fair... these are talented womenand women of convivtion. PLEASE, this discussion has been going on for fifty years..lets just enjoy music without "bashing" what we disapprove of or don"t enjoy.

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: T. in Oklahoma
Date: 27 Apr 98 - 11:19 AM

Obviously whether "folk" music is in decline depends on how you define "folk" music. If we define it broadly as simply all music made by human beings, we are zoologically correct--human music differs from the music (if we call it that) of whales and birds--and we will find no evidence of decline. But then we will need to find other words in order to classify and describe historical and other distinctions within the field of human music.

On the other hand we might define "folk music" so narrowly we will be forced to conclude that it never existed.

One definition which I greatly dislike defines "folk" music as meeting what I call (1) the criterion of non-literacy and (2) the criterion of ignorance. According to this definition, "folk" music is music which is transmitted without the aid of writing or recording or electromagnetic broadcast among peoply who do not distinguish it from other kinds of music.

I dislike this definition especially for the second part, what I call the criterion of ignorance. I doubt that it describes the realities that exist among the very people whom I suspect the formulators of the criterion had in mind when they formulated it. I think it may rather verge on being an insult. The first criterion does sometimes apply, but I suspect that it can't be applied too strictly to the pragmatic realities workaday life in literate societies. Also, as George Pullen Jackson pointed out, the criterion of non-literacy was partly responsible for the folklorists overlooking the shape-note singing societies for a number of years.

The venerable definition of "continuity, variation, and selection" avoids patronizing anyone and provides a useful description of how music evolves. But much music which the folklorists would not consider "folk" music evolves by means of these same processes. J. S. Bach selected and varied old German hymns and passed them on to subsequent generations (continuity), which have arranged them (variation) for instruments, ensembles, and media which did not even exist in J. S. Bach's day.

So in my posting of April 24 I tried to avoid the "folk" definition trap altogether. Instead I tried to define the category of (1) one-line (2) nearly diatonic melody of (3) consistent tonality throughout. This describes much of what folklorists would call "folk" music and leaves plenty of room to trace the historical development of the various cultural settings in which it is used. One may be able to identify many "declines" of various uses to which this category of music is put (player pianos? maybe they are flourishing, maybe they are declining).

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: Bruce O.
Date: 27 Apr 98 - 03:28 PM

Even the professional folklorists on another list are having a hard fime defining 'folk music', 'folk song' and the like (Dick and Susan of DT are probably still on it as well as others that comment here). (I'm been off that for a while, their server doesn't like my messages. No problems with a 'majordomo' type). I'm of the old school. Song has to survive 50 or more years by oral tradition alone-alone-alone. Rare is the song that was noted by a traditional singer using musical accompaniement. That's not all, but I won't go into minor details here. Folk Lyric records had an 'Interpreter' series for traditional songs sung by professioanal singers, and I'd like to see that expanded to include such as Ewan MacColl, who sometimes sang songs that he learned from traditional singers, sometimes he expanded traditional texts from printed sources, and sometimes got his old songs and tunes entirely from printed sources. Same for A. L. Lloyd.

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: Barry Finn
Date: 27 Apr 98 - 04:04 PM

Bruce, just to throw a slight curve here. Both MacColl & Lloyd wrote songs that have been collected as traditional songs from traditional singers, MacColl collected one of his own, much to his amazement. Conolly, wrote "Fiddlers Green", which is fast entering into the tradition, along with many others. I'm pretty stubbon myself on what I consider to be folk & traditional, but it's my own, & I'd certainally say that it's these songwriters that keep the tradition alive. But then it's a matter of taste & that's again personnal, no? E Bogel, C Twaney, S Rogers, A Fisher, T Lewis, J Payne, K Wolfe, E Pickford, S Kahn, J Richie, S Gunning, B Wheeler, all of these people & more have written (folk?) songs, that I'd say will be around for some time to come, maybe even becoming traditional some day soon. Barry

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: Bruce O.
Date: 27 Apr 98 - 04:16 PM

If it hasn't been collected from a traditional singer born after the original composer died, then it's not a folk song in my book, in may just be the author/singer's reputaton keeping it alive, like many of Elvis Presly's songs. There's a lot of folk type songs that we do not know if they will last. 50 years is about a minimum span to tell us that, in my estimation.

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: Bert
Date: 27 Apr 98 - 04:44 PM

Bruce O.,
I would say that that is a petty good definition of a traditional song.

What do 'you' call all the stuff that people are singing nowadays?

This forum has a pretty good cross section of the songs that ordinary people are interested in and are singing. We call it 'Folk' but you, as a serious collector must have your own name for it.

Bert.

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: Pete M
Date: 27 Apr 98 - 04:52 PM

I have to take issue with Aldus, my perception of this discussion is quite the opposite of narrow minded. Just because we disagree with an expressed viewpoint does not make us narrow minded; the denial of that viewpoint would, but thats not what we have. Just to throw in my own two pennyworth, and I hasten to add that it is an opinion not a definition; whilst I have some sympathy with the arguments of T in Oaklahoma, I am much more inclined to Bruce O's view. What is missing from the first, and what is to me far more important than the derivation or style of the music, is that the lyrics make a social point relevant to the time they were created. Those that endure tend to be those where the point is timeless - seduction, desertion, incest, lock outs, disasters etc. Of course a good tune helps but these are frequently around and can be picked up for re-use. So if any one wants to listen to someone, female or otherwise, "singing their diary" fine, but in my book its not folk now and certainly wont be in 50 years time.

Pete M

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: Bruce O.
Date: 27 Apr 98 - 05:22 PM

I'm not trying to cast something in concrete, just trying to isolate one thing that has some modeately well defined meaning. We need some other categories as we get farther away from that towrd more modern 'folk' style all the way to Steeleye Span, John Denver, John Hartford, Phil Ochs, etc (newer ones I don't even know about). There's lots of borderline stuff I don't know what to do about. And then there's the touchy definition of what's a 'traditional singer'. Do we include old the time semipro entertainers that put Child ballads on phono records in the 1920's. How about the semipros like Obray Ramsay and others that recorded solos with their own accompaniment in the 1950's and early 60's. Jean Ritchie is a traditional singer when she sings her own old family songs, but the last two concerts I've heard her do were mostly her own compositions. Frank Warner was a collector, not a traditional singer, but he tried hard to imitate his traditional sources. He's about my ideal for an interpreter', and I think his son Jeff falls in the same category, as do Art Thieme, Lou Killen, Michael Cooney and a few other 'big' names.
Harry Ballafonte got much of his material from Caribean collections in the Library of Congress Folklore Archive, but I have no idea about how much he adapted it to be his own style.

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: Earl
Date: 27 Apr 98 - 05:38 PM

I think the problem is that the word "folk" is so slippery we're often not talking about the same things in these discussions. Traditional songs are always folk but folk songs (in many current definitions) are not always traditional. Contemporary songs are, by definition, not traditional but there are contemporary songwriters writing songs that most people, even here, would call folk songs.

Some have argued (myself included) that types of rock music that emerge from distinct ethnic or regional communities should be considered folk. I now think that broadening the definition like that is not really helpful. However, I think without any grassroots input the whole processes is a little too self-conscious. A songwriter writes a song in a traditional style and fifty years later we find out if its folk.

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: erica
Date: 27 Apr 98 - 06:41 PM

Going way back to Marc B's 24th April comment about folk's propensity toward being "liked," i definitely think that it has a mighty pull to it. When i was in high school, i sang an a capella Irish song ("When a man's in love" off of a Chieftains album) in the midst of the pop and rock and cheezy taped accompaniments of the rest of the talent show. Being as bold and brazen as i was (am?...nah), i did it just cause i loved it and didn't really think it'd go over well, but didn't really give a damn either--and so i got up, i sang, and got a whole auditorium of rather disrespectful, talking students to be quiet for a few minutes. I was sort of shocked by the response, and a few years later, i still am wowed by the hush that occasionally falls over rowdy bars when i get up in the midst of an open mic and my voice and I start a ballad. I don't know where the magick of the songs comes from--maybe it's just that particular arrangements of notes have this amazing enrapturing effect on people. But come on, that's not it...and i guess we're coming up to my meek little sort-of-definition of "folk" to add into the thread. I think that the draw of folk, its magick, comes from the lives of everyone who has sung it. They're life songs, and they pick up a little bit of each person as they're passed down through the years, whether they're sung while rambling down the road town to town, doing the barn chores, vacuuming or on the stage. Regardless of specific story scheme, they contain one of the pure human sentiments that are timeless and inherent in each feeling being, and begin to develop a geneology of their own...q heard the song from p who learned it from o who got it from n.... and it gets its own history of people who were touched by it. i think that's what it is for me, anyway, and i also think that i just ended up writing a very longwinded explaination of someone else's concise thought (JB, maybe?) nevermind me...i'll just stick to singing. sorry for the ramble...

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: Bruce O.
Date: 27 Apr 98 - 07:00 PM

I'm on a mailing list with Scots songs and music on it, and 'folk' still seems to have some meaning there. On the other hand the subject of 'Jacobite' songs turned up, and those could be just about anyting along those lines from 1684 when Catholic James I came in, to 1998, on either side, but usually favouring the rebels. They haven't really defined the term.

The advantage of the 50 years is that folk wisdom also has time to separate the wheat from the chaff. Traditional songs aren't senseless ditties, unless they were made to be humorously nonsensical. They should have long outlasted the original singer, so we know its the song that's good not the author/singer. I'll repeat here what Art Thieme added to a prior note, and I gave in an earlier thread, a bit of folk wisdom from an uncle: The song isn't good because its old, its old because its good.

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: T. in Oklahoma
Date: 28 Apr 98 - 02:01 PM

Bruce O's tried-and-true criterion strikes me as useful in the sense that a given group of musicians (amateur or professional) might indeed distinguish 'new' from 'old' in the works that they perform. For example, Flora Thompson's semi-fictionalized autobiography, "Lark Rise to Candleford" describes a singing-session in a Victorian English small-town pub. The evening begins with the young unmarried men singing show-tunes and other popular songs. It ends with the old men singing 'summat as has stood the test o time' -- namely Child ballads. But there might be other situations where the distinction between new and old is not made.

Bruce O.'s "always-always-always" non-literate transmission criterion strikes me as less useful. It could lead to making absurd distinctions between versions of a song. Suppose singer A learns a song by having it sung to him repeatedly until he remembers it, while singer B learns another version of the same song but writes it down in order to help himself learn it. The non-literate transmission criterion would require us to put up a phoney wall between the two versions, calling A's version "traditional" or "folk" or "authentic" and the B's version "literary" or "inauthentic". In a literate society, both hearing and writing are part of the transmission process, and the fact that a song has been transmitted by one means or the other, or by a mixture of them, should not be used as a basis of classification unless different transmission routes can be shown to have made a difference to the end product.

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: Bruce O.
Date: 28 Apr 98 - 02:12 PM

Not many distinctions are that absured. Songs collected from singers on some sort of recording devise have often been cut down to convenient size for issue as a commercial recording, so one does not even get the whole song. Singers often edited their material. Those are not folksongs in my book.

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: JB3 (formerly "JB" in this thread)
Date: 29 Apr 98 - 02:44 AM

I loved erica's thoughts about the magick of folk songs. There is a sum to a traditional folk song that is greater than its (definable) parts. While I have to say I'm a traditionalist and agree with Bruce O.'s definition, I do feel there are contemporary writers like Jean Ritchie who are so immersed in traditional music that their composed songs are passing almost seamlessly into the tradition. Here's hoping we all live at least another 50 years, so we can find out!

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: JB3 (formerly "JB" in this thread)
Date: 29 Apr 98 - 03:05 AM

I loved erica's thoughts about the magick of folk songs. There is a sum to a traditional folk song that is greater than its (definable) parts. While I have to say I'm a traditionalist and agree with Bruce O.'s definition, I do feel there are contemporary writers like Jean Ritchie who are so immersed in traditional music that their composed songs are passing almost seamlessly into the tradition. Here's hoping we all live at least another 50 years, so we can find out!

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: Bert
Date: 29 Apr 98 - 10:33 AM

Bruce O.,

Unfortunately, for most of us ordinary folk, our first exposure to Folk Music is through Commercial Recordings. I know they don't fit most definitions of true folk music but they are better than nothing. I first got interested in American Folk Music in the Fifties after listening to recordings by Lonnie Donnegan. I know he was criticized by one well known collector over here, but he introduced a whole generation of British Youth to American Folk Music.
Which is more that can be said for that particular collector.

Not that I wish to put down collectors, they have done (and are still doing) a wonderful job.
It's just that we need both. Commercial recordings introduce songs to the general public. Then, those whose interest has been aroused will look to the collectors who have preserved the songs along with their historic backgrounds.

Bert.

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: erica
Date: 29 Apr 98 - 11:52 AM

that's a really good point that Bert made about commercial recordings being the initial exposure--sometimes they're the first step in. and even though the introduction was made through a CD or something like that, once a person's hooked it's likely they'll go beyond recorded stuff, into the collectors' realm. part of me is also wondering what the problem is with commercial recordings--they make the music more accessible to those who enjoy it and can't make it out to festivals and jams and sessions everytime they get a musical itch. sure, you're gonna get those people who buy it and don't FEEL it, but every musical genre has those borderline dabblers. they don't really harm the core too much. and maybe one thinks that the technology and mass distribution of folk is all weird and slightly wrong, that the digitalization of tradition is... hey, wait a minute. i think that was the reaction of a fella when i told him i got some lyrics off of the net...something about mudcats... : )

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: Roger Himler
Date: 30 Apr 98 - 10:11 PM

If one holds onto the criterion that recording a song pulls it away from being traditional and away from being folk, then demise is inevitable. If enough people like a song, someone will record it. Eventually what is left are songs that few people like.

I am not very scholarly, so I just want to add my feelings about this subject. The Uncertainty Principle says we cannot measure something without fundamentally altering it at the same time. I believe labels act the same way. So my preference is to duck labels.

But let me talk about the music I love. My guess is that all the songs under traditional and folk started with one person. Part of the process of oral transmission means others add both their ideas and their misunderstandings. This is where media may interfere. They can create the idea of one right or true version.

I used to think that folk music was written for pleasure, perhaps even just the original writer's pleasure and only coincidentally was passed to others. Songs written to impress others were naturally not folk.

But when I think of a song like The Texas Rangers (Come all ye Texas Rangers whereever you may be), if feels like folk. It was probably derived from a Broadside and so was written for money, but passed into an oral tradition.

What I think has happened in the last ten years or so is an increasing amount of recorded music. It is simpler to record and distribute music on a small scale than was ever possible before. This means that music that may have only had oral transmission before can now have media transmission. I believe this makes it unlikely that any song will exist in just the oral tradition for very long if it has redeeming value to others. Someone somewhere will write it down and/or record it. Certainly this is a loss in some sense. I believe the oral tradition allows for a song's rough edges to be sanded down and smoothed out. It is this process that I believe makes traditional and folk music so likeable.

It may be that this sanding process will continue to take place, but will take longer. Just as the original Broadside of Texas Rangers may no longer exist, the CD's and tapes and songbooks will also fade away. This is happening with music on vinyl already.

I believe that good music will continue to be written and sung by others. Some of it will pass into song circles, patios, living rooms, and other places were people gather together to enjoy music. Some of it will adhere to the definition attributed to Michael Cooney (If it takes more than one trip from the car to bring it in, it ain't folk).

I am not worried about the demise of folk music. This digital tradition provides one of many new forums for people to share their love of music. Whether we call it folk or traditional is of less importance to me than that there be music that is accessible to people at a social level that is not shovelled out by some conglomerate who has their own idea of what the people want.

There remains much music that survives simply because people love to hear it. That is what I care deeply about.

Roger from Baltimore

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: T. in Oklahoma
Date: 01 May 98 - 10:44 AM

Roger from Bal'mer:

I agree that merely writing or recording a song doesn't necessarily deprive a song of "folk" status it would otherwise have, by any definition of "folk" which defines a category of music which actually exists in the workaday lives of members of a modern, literate, industrialized society.

The same attention to context, though, requires me to grant at least half a point to Bruce O. In his posting of April 28 he spoke of the needs of the commercial market bringing new versions of songs into being. I'm not sure I would agree with Bruce O. that the commercialized versions are any less (or more) "folk" than the pre-existing versions. But the influence of the commercial market on the evolution of a given piece of music must be taken into account.

The commercial market has been a factor influencing music since the 17th century and perhaps longer. Valid historical questions are (1) whether the commercial market for printed music caused some music to develop differently from how it would have otherwise, and (2) whether the modern mass electronic market creates influences that are new in kind, or only in degree, from the commercial influences of past ages.

A further point this thread may consider is whether a musicological definition of folk music can be offered independent of a sociological definition. So far on this thread I have only given a sociological definition: Folk music is music people use while doing something besides listening to it. My example was singing or listening to a CD while vacuuming the living room. This is not a musicological definition because the same music is "folk" when I listen to it while vacuuming, and "art" music when I listen to it in a concert hall. A little later I tried to define a musical category of one-line, mostly diatonic melody of consistent tonality, but I didn't (and still don't) require the word "folk" be applied to it. Perhaps any musicological definition of "folk" music won't be able to have precise boundaries; perhaps it must be allowed to overlap a great deal with other categories, such as "popular" music.

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: Jon W.
Date: 01 May 98 - 11:08 AM

I wouldn't worry too much about recordings stopping or ever slowing down the changes to songs we call "the folk process." Most every one who learns a song, whether it be from another person, from a record, or from a book, likes to put something of their own expression into it and perhaps leave out something of the song they don't find quite as attractive. This is true, I think, even of classical music which is farther from being set in concrete that most people realize.

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From:
Date: 03 May 98 - 05:26 PM

Folk music is on the television all the time up here in Canada. Mind you, it doesn't do me much good because I don't own a TV, but its there for people who want to watch it. Mostly celtic and celtic influenced stuff, but better than the days of the 1980's when CBC cancelled the Ryan's Fancy TV show, which used to feature guests from North America, the UK, and Ireland. The man who cancelled it said he never again wanted to hear fiddles on national television. Natalie and Ashley have put an end to that, although this being Canada the show times are changed from time to time to accomodate the Stanley Cup playoffs.:)

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From:
Date: 05 May 98 - 11:12 PM

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: steve t
Date: 06 May 98 - 04:59 AM

RESTARTING THIS THREAD WITH TITLE: The demise fo Folk Music, Part II

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Oct 01 - 05:22 AM

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 09 Oct 01 - 07:55 AM

Sorry that I got in so late... Is the question the demise of folk music, or the demise of commercially viable folk music that you can make a living singing? Those are different questions. Commercially viable folk music is a little bit of an abberation. Maybe not quite an oxymoron, but at heart, folk music has always been primarily for home and community entertainment, made by people who had day jobs. In that regard, folk music has "demised" at all. It's like it always has been, except for occasional reincarnations in popular music. Nobody said folk music demised when the Weavers, Harry Belefonte and the Kingston Trio stopped producing hit records. It sounds like the question is more, "Why isn't folk music in the top 40 anymore?" Perhaps the one single thing that has made people aware of more traditional folk music has been the popularity of Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? Who would ever thought that I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow would win an Emmy as best country song of the year? Certainly not Emry Arthur, who originally recorded it. A female friend of my 26 year old son bught the soundtrack and loves it. She'd never heard anything like it. The gospel chorus I'm in sang for an elementary school a while back, and a little black girl about 8 or 9 asked "I'm Christian, why haven't I ever heard gospel?" Folk music will never "demise." It's just that these days, for the most part, you have to sing the music out of love for it, and just the shear enjoyment of it. If you use it as a springboard to country music, rock or pop, you're not reviving it. Most people who make it as a popular music star reject the label "folk Singer." People like Steve Earle and even Bruce Springsteen are the exceptions. Steve Earle's songs are as much "folk music" as I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow.

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: GUEST,Frank
Date: 09 Oct 01 - 11:33 AM

As long as there is history, there will be folk music. It may go in and out of vogue but it's part of who we are regardless of where we come from.

Sometimes you might have to search for it a little harder but it'll be there.

Frank

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: Art Thieme
Date: 09 Oct 01 - 02:42 PM

Alas, Jerry, we've rehashed this here and in a million other threads like those on 'what is folk music. You and the new folks here might as well have a go at it. Many who previously joined in this thread are not here much these days. Said our piece and went on. Having nothing these days but too much time on my hands, I'll be lurking and jumping in---but with less verbosity than before I'm pretty sure.

Art

Subject: RE: The demise of Folk Music
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 09 Oct 01 - 02:49 PM

The more observant may have noticed that this thread had ended with a notice that it was to be continued in part II. It would seem to me to be rather more logical to continue the discussion where it ended than re-starting in the middle.

PART II Starts here.

Jon