Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 07:26 AM

You all knew I was in here lurking, didn't you?

It is I think quite encouraging to see that some people are getting the idea that "folk" is a matter of derivation whereas pretty well every other type of music is defined by form.

And almost everyone seems finally to have got the idea that "folk" is not a descriptor of quality and does not prescribe what people play nor how they are "allowed" to play it.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 08:28 AM

If it's only a descriptor, why do 99% of enthusiasts adopt the unspoken part that says folk is old songs, accompanied by old instruments in an approximation of an old style? If that proportion, or something like it is correct, folk is something else. The argument as ever, is what that thing is? Many of us call it the folk revival to separate what happens on the ground from the theory.

If Linstead Market was regularly heard in dub version coming from festival speakers, or an electronica Lowlands rang through the clubs, we could safely abandon form as a fundamental, but it doesn't, so it probably is. Music is sound and the folk music of these islands is connected to the rest of the world by that DNA.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 08:36 AM

well i think its too long and people put their finger in their ear, and then eat crisps with it. Its unhygienic.

Supposing you derived a horrid illness from the germs inside someones ear. Would you be saying -oh! its a question of derivation then. I think not, Mr Bridge.

You'd be saying - why can't we go back to two minute classics, like Desolation Row? I don't want sing long germy songs any more! With choruses that restrict the flow of corpuscles and give the audience gangrene.

You'd soon change your tune.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 08:56 AM

Guest.999,
Sorry for being such a pain in the arse for so long - now who else is there to victimise?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 09:01 AM

At the risk of repeating myself from other threads, 'Folk' is a word in our evolving very traditional language. Like many old and common words in the dictionary it has several meanings, some old, some new. It evolves just like the songs have evolved. The folk (with some nudges from commercial interests) have spoken. There is no point in bleating on about confusion and stealing our word. The word 'back', for instance, has multiple related meanings, but we seem to manage okay without lamenting this fact.

Jim,
If you're still interested, I've found my sources on the Scott/Buccleuch question. I could start another thread or PM you?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 10:33 AM

"A labour Club in Glossop....? Abit like the music hall joke about the Conservative Club in Moscow."

Lay off the class war there, Al, I'll have you know that Glossop is an oasis of socialism, holding out against the Tories in Buxton and rural parts of High Peak. Our Labour club is a staunch supporter of acoustic music and cheap beer - though admittedly a significant number of Labour Party members have traditionally frequented the Conservative club, where they have snooker tables.

Returning to the more general discussion, you could - of course - try to define folk music by form. The popular songs of the 17th - 19th century that wound up in the mouths of the singers that the likes of Sharp collected from have a different musical and lyrical language from the music hall era songs that came later, or the blues and jazz influenced popular musics of the later 20th century. Glueman is right to identify that the sound of those earlier songs, coupled with particular conventions regarding instrumentation and singing style, as the distinctive sound of the folk revival - the traditional end of it at least. But like Steve I've long accepted that 'folk' means differen things in different contexts... and this thread isn't supposed to be a 'What is Folk?' thread anyway.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 10:55 AM

Up to comparatively recently we have dealt with an identifiable body of song to which we attached the term 'folk', even if that identification was "I don't know what it is but I know it when I hear it". The 1954 definition tried, sort of successfully, to pinpoint characteristics that went into the makeup of those songs, their origins, the forms they took and their significance to the communities from which they were obtained.
These are the folk songs that have been archived, documented and continuously analysed right up to the present day and these are the songs that will be passed on as 'folk', a representation of the 'common creative output' when we are all wormfeed.
It is only within the clubs, and not all of those I'm told, that there is any dispute over the general acceptance of the term to any great extent.
Whatever happens to the clubs, it is the documented definition that will prevail; folk is probably the high on the list of most extensive musical forms to have been discussed, defined and analysed.
It is true that we don't need a label for the songs we sing, but we do need one in order to be able to point them out to others, to tell them where to go and look for them. We need one to know where to find them ourselves, and we need one to discuss them among ourselves and perhaps to reach an agreement and understanding of them by pooling what few facts and opinions we all possess (wouldn't life be boring if that ever happened?).
I believe one of the reasons for the present confusion lies at the door of collectors who have assumed that our source singers had nothing to offer other than their songs, so they/we never bothered asking their opinions – result; it can safely be claimed that "they never differentiated between the varying types of song in their repertoire, so why should we?" This has been taken so far as to have it be suggested that "folk does not exist and is a self-serving invention of collectors and researchers."
At least two thirds of our collecting work was interviews with singers, attempting to find out what they thought about their art; probably far too little, far too late, but enough to undermine the 'free-as-birdsong, instinctive' image that we have saddled our traditional singers with.
Walter Pardon was dividing his songs into clear categories as early as 1948, blind Traveller, Mary Delaney referred to her 'folk songs' as "Me daddy's songs (she learned about ten of her 100-plus songs from him), and swore that "the new songs have the old ones ruined". All the 'big' singers (sizable repertoires and a semblance of style) we talked to attached their own label to the songs – come-all-yes, traditional, the old songs, local songs; Walter Pardon very firmly used 'folk' and certainly had an opinion where they came from and what they meant to him.
For me, Bert Lloyd said it all in the last chapter of Folk Song in England:
"If little Boxes and The Red Flag are folk songs, we need a new term to describe The Outlandish Knight, Searching For Young Lambs and The Coalowner and the Pitman's Wife" – only it's a bit late in the day for us to go searching for a replacement - IMO.
Jim Carroll
PS Sorry to all who have heard all this ad nauseum!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: The Sandman
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 11:04 AM

no, Jim, do not apologise it is necessary that someone keeps banging on, about terminology. and you talking ad nauseam about this subject is becoming a tradition.
I dont expect to hear karoake music, or classical symphonies when i go to a folk club[ I expect folk music], neither do i expect to hear CW in a JAZZ CLUB, however i would have no objection to western swing in a jazz club because it involves improvisation.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: The Sandman
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 11:17 AM

When I go to open a can of baked beans, I do not expect it to contain plums.
If I go to a concert which is advertised as Beethoven, I do not expect to be foisted off with Daniel o Donnell.
If a club is an Acoustic music club, then play acoustic music, but not amplified music
WE ALL KNOW APPROXIMATELY THE BOUNDARIES OF FOLK MUSIC and i do not expect to see any horse in my folk club. horse music is something else

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 11:21 AM

are getting the idea that "folk" is a matter of derivation whereas pretty well every other type of music is defined by form.

Surely Folk is as much about form as it is derivation if not even more so than other musics. This is one of the reasons I take issue with the 1954 Definition because it doesn't go into the musical form that defines the songs - i.e the venacular idioms in which they were composed and subsequently modified, or not.

Is a song only a Folk Song if we prove it's derivation? What of those songs where we can't do that - those that are purely idiomatic?

Is it really possible to discuss 1954 without wondering what other sorts of music it might possibly be talking about as well as our common or garden Folk Songs & Ballads? Is it a definition of Folk or a definition of Derivation?

Must dash. Too nice a day!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: The Sandman
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 12:03 PM

to continue, ... I can get a pretty good idea from a folk clubs guest list of what to expect, if it says brian peters, dick miles, steve turner, martin carthy, that is going to be different from derek brimstone, harvey andrews, jack hudson,jez lowe.if it is someone i dont know of there is normally a description in the advertising, such as didgeridoo player who yodels while playing nose flute etc, or the artist may have a web site that i can check out and hear a sample.
so this" Is it really possible to discuss 1954 without wondering what other sorts of music it might possibly be talking about as well as our common or garden Folk Songs & Ballads? Is it a definition of Folk or a definition of Derivation?" is just a novel way of wasting time.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 12:30 PM

"Surely Folk is as much about form as it is derivation"
Not really Suib - even within the English tradition it takes on numerous forms - narrative being the most common one.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 01:03 PM

If we look at the form a Folk Song is most likely to take then that's going to be as much about its morphology as it is about its derivation. And what about the Derivation of those Forms? Which is an important thing to consider with respect of the Traditional Idiom, be it the Traditional (Anon) songs themselves, those found in Broadsides, or the vernacular writings of Tommy Armstrong and the psuedo-folk of Rudyard Kipling from the Barrack-room Ballads to the Puck Songs etc.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 01:52 PM

Oh shit, spoke too soon.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 02:12 PM

"Surely Folk is as much about form as it is derivation if not even more so than other musics. This is one of the reasons I take issue with the 1954 Definition because it doesn't go into the musical form that defines the songs."

Am I being a bit thick here, in thinking that's the whole point of 1954: that it was formulated to accommodate The Folk of Music of Yugoslavia - or China, or India, come to that - alongside that of the British Isles or North America? All of which have very different musical forms.

One of the problems with defining folk music as 'that which is played in Designated Folk Contexts' is that it denies every other nation of the globe (apart from a few former colonies) the right to their own folk music.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 02:14 PM

Rather than argue that individulas are trying to fit other forms of music under the 'folk' banner (something I've never done, incidentally) it might be useful to work out why the forms of the tradition occupy the entirety of folk for many people.

As a musical sensualist it is always form that tickles my imagination first, and history provides a context. In fact I can be seduced by all manner of politically incorrect tunes and songs if they're presented compellingly without ever wanting to inhabit the sensibility from which they emanated. I don't feel I'm alone in that visceral response, which is why for so many the form is the message.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 02:15 PM

Heh! heh! Derivation my arse.......!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 04:33 PM

One of the problems with defining folk music as 'that which is played in Designated Folk Contexts'...

The point of which is to at least try and accomodate the diverse musical styles that occur in these contexts under the general heading of Folk but which might not be considered Folk in the strictest sense of the word. In other words, it's an empirical definition based on a lifetime's ongoing evidence & near nervous breakdown. Also it attempted to understand, and appreciate, why this might be, though in the end I give up. Here in the North West Folk Music is that which is by and beloved of Folkies, on the evidence of which I'd say (in the last year) a good 85% of which could be performed as pop / rock / easy listening in any other context irrespective of Form or Derivation.

...is that it denies every other nation of the globe (apart from a few former colonies) the right to their own folk music.

From an enthnomusicological perspective context is just as much a consideration as form / derivation. Otherwise when I said Surely Folk is as much about form as it is derivation... I was talking specifically about English Speaking Folk Song & Ballad. Sorry for not making this clear. But whatever the music, whatever the culture, Form is just as important as Derivation which almost brings me back to the Equine Truism, but perhaps that particular beast has long since bolted. Let's leave the stable door ajar shall we?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 05:32 PM

Hi Al. Don't you mean "Pickled penis"?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: greg stephens
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 06:29 PM

SA's remark "This is one of the reasons I take issue with the 1954 Definition because it doesn't go into the musical form that defines the songs " is ludicrous to me. Folk music if it anything is created within a culture and helps define that culture, by community choice (a la 1954 definition basically). How can it have a defined "form"? Scat Tester in Susex played his music one way, Black Umfolosi did it their way, Mongloian goatherds do it their way. How could they possibly come up with a common form? Don't be silly.
Woody Guthrie used an American form. I play NW English tunes in the way I learnt them in the NW of England. How could the 1954 defintion define those forms? The people who made the (very useful) definition probably hadn't heard any Cumbrian merry neet singers. Why should they be familiar with the "form"?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 11:44 PM

Scat Tester, the well-known impro-jazz singer.

Or did you mean good old Scan?

~M~

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 05:21 AM

Scat Tester in Susex played his music one way, Black Umfolosi did it their way, Mongloian goatherds do it their way. How could they possibly come up with a common form? Don't be silly.

I don't ordinary draw attention to typos (God knows I make enough of them myself!) but can we really let Scat Tester pass without a chuckle? Especially as N & T are quite separate on a QWERTY keyboard. A Freudian slip of the finger perhaps? Or one of the more picturesque rural trades now lost to agrarian mechanisation. Oo-Ar, I be a scat tester, I be - just like my father afore me, and his father afore him - scat testers for generations... A thankless task no doubt, but one that at least paid well enough to keep the fellow up in concertina repairs...

Looking around for Scan Tester (on WIKI; nothing on YouTube) we learn he was nicknamed Scantelope art the age of 5; the only other reference for Scantelope is Scantelope - a fleet-of-foot, bare-all buxom beast (whose revealing exploits are chronicled in the best-selling naturist book, “What Really Went On Behind the Scenes in the Garden of Eden”). One might ponder in the hope of enlightenment...

But, as I said earlier, Greg, I was talking of English Folk Song and Ballad which, as with any music, is as much about Form as it is about Derivation. Once more I apologise for not making this clear at the time. Anyway - in each of the examples you cite Form is the equal at least (let's be generous here) of Derivation - not the same Form I grant, nor yet even the same Derivation (let's be grateful for diversity, eh?), but Form nevertheless, which is itself derived, whatever the Idiom. Indeed one might see the Form as the defining aspect of a particular tradition. Worth a thought anyway?

*

I'm niggled this morning because on reading my copy of I, Claudius earlier there was a mention of simnel cakes (Penguin Modern Classics, 2006; Chapter 9, p 107). It's really too early to get my head around it, but I noticed in one of our Lancastrian Garden Centres the other day Simnel Cakes are now being sold as Spring Cakes. Indeed, even Easter is fast vanishing under a wave of secular neo-paganism...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 06:37 AM

One day all the folk singers will be rounded up and sent to live on a derivation - to make way for the forward progress of Simon Cowellisation.

You'll find me doing the ghost dance.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 06:42 AM

Cumbrian merry neet singers

What's that then? Sounds interesting...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 12:03 PM

The problem with definitions is that they change and morph. I think that the 1954 definition has merit but must be looked at as only one valid definition.

For example, in my definition I would include American jazz. It is culture-based in its origins, changes with new environments, includes variants on tunes, transmitted aurally as well as through theory, suggests a cultural environment which has mutated over time,
has a tradition and history going back to the inception of our country through the plight of African-Americans in slavery, is now international in scope to include many players and listeners and overlaps with popular music.

What is problematic is the exclusivity clause written into many folk definitions that is too rigid, too narrow and tending toward being precious.

I see folk music as tending to be more inclusive, allowing for more participation and less restriction, away from concert the approach which isolates audience from performer.

Also, just because it is folk music doesn't mean that it's necessarily good music. Some of it is doggerel, trite, uninteresting, and worshipped for its classification rather than its music.

Then, the enduring folk music is from a wellspring of human experience that transcends all theoretical bickering about what it is.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 01:46 PM

"For example, in my definition...."
Can we do that? We can certainly have opinions on what should be included, but for the sake of communication we agree to a documented dictionary defintion, otherwise we enter the world of "I believe potatoes are really fruit".
Not disagreeing with your point SS, in fact I too believe American Jazz should fall under the 'folk' umbrella, but once we make a UDI with the language we end up not talking to each other, which seems to be the position the club scene has reached at present - with the inevitable consequences.
I believe the definition is in much need of updating, and I really thought that this might happen when Dave Harker wrote 'Fakelore' until I read it and found that he'd thrown the baby out with the bathwater, with the bath!
The rest of your points - inclusivity, participation, concert, good/bad... etc... are really not anything to do with how we define the music, rather than we do with it and how we approach it on a personal level - I detest dates, but it doesn't stop them from being dates.
And bickering is only one of the less attractive ways of reaching an understanding.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: Bert
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 02:30 PM

Well said Stringsinger. The problem with the 1954 and other definitions is that they leave so much out.

The 1954 definition somehow does not include most of the songs that have been preserved by various collectors.

Also definitions are open to misinterpretation. like Oral Transmission.

If I sing a song that I learned from my Dad who learned it from his Granma then that sounds OK., but what if I learned a song from hearing it on the radio? Does that count? It is certainly oral transmission (OK with a little help in the transmission) but it would include an awful lot of songs which I don't consider Folk.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Mar 11 - 06:54 AM

Steve;
"If you're still interested, I've found my sources on the Scott/Buccleuch question. I could start another thread or PM you?"
Sorry Steve, overlooked this earlier.
As anybody with an interest in ballads would, I'd be interested in anything that throws fresh light on the doctoring of ballad texts, particularly on evidence that Peter Buchan was more or less of a fake than Scott, or any other of the anthologists.
Not sure I'm qualified to add anything to what has already been said - be interested to learn if you can.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 30 Mar 11 - 10:52 AM

Surely most or at least much American jazz (well, N'Awlins and Dixieland for starters) does fall within the "folk" definition although experimental stuff like (in their day) "The Spontaneous Music Ensemble" doesn't.

What I don't see in any definitions that I know of is "the exclusivity clause written into many folk definitions that is too rigid, too narrow and tending toward being precious".

A definition is not a preference.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 30 Mar 11 - 11:08 AM

I wouldn't call the SME folk, but they were certainly part of the Free Jazz Tradition and Community - and played well within that Tradition - speaking as one who was once scathed as the worst percussionist in the world by the late great John Stevens! Honour indeed.

But alongside John Stevens we had (and still have) the equally great KEN HYDER and his band Talisker who approached scottish folk material in a similarly free-form way - their version of Ca' The Yowes is legendary, Whistle o'er the Lave o 't likewise.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 30 Mar 11 - 11:12 AM

Another reason why Free Improv isn't Folk... Ever tried doing it in a Folk Club? No way. On the other hand, I've regularly sang Folk Songs as part of performances of Free Improv...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 30 Mar 11 - 04:31 PM

Jim,
I don't like hijacking other people's threads and this one's getting too long for my steam computer to cope with anyway so I'll start a new thread 'Scott's Fabrications'.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: The Sandman
Date: 22 Jul 13 - 04:29 PM

somebody mentioned Donovan, I blame him, it was also his fault Dylan went electric