Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads
From:
GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 03 Nov 11 - 09:00 AM
he rejects the entire tenet of folk music
Not so, I just reject the Horse Definition (and, by association, the 1954 Definition too) as telling us nothing that isn't true of any other music. Simply put I refuse to accept that all music is Folk Music because Folk Song is largely a matter of Form(s) and largely a matter of Context. That said, All music can be Folk Music, but only in very specific contexts. This is all about Pragmatics; a Butcher is a Butcher, but whilst pigs may well fear a Pork Butcher, families need not fear a Family Butcher in quite the same way. Beyond that I'd say the whole thing is too vast, nebulous, wonderful and mutuable a thing to define with any degree of accuracy, or indeed certainty, without reducing it to the sort of idiotic pedantry that isn't entirely untypical in Folk Circles. Thus do I say: Folk Is as Folk Does, which suffices as a sort-of non-definition for me.
he sees himself as able to define which of his offerings are folk and which are not.
Awkward one really because my passion for Folk is dependent on a very wide cultural Zeitgeist that existed in my childhood and therefore includes a vast amount of (seemingly) disparate influences and inspirations including (off the top of my head) The Penguin Book of English Folk Song (just landed a pristine First Edition paperback in Southport the other week; collecting them is a sort of sub-hobby of mine); The Leaping Hare; The Pattern Under the Plough (etc. any of George Ewart Evans' books will do); A Song for Every Season; The Collected Ghost Stories of M R James (and their TV adaptations): The Singing Molecatcher of Morayshire; The Green Man by Kathleen Basford; The Green Man by William Anderson; The Faber Book of Popular Verse; Engolish Folk Heroes by Christina Hole; The Martyrdom of Saint Magnus; Eight Songs for a Mad King; Shirley & Dolly Collins; the Battle of the Field; Among the Many Attractions at the Show Will Be a High Class Band; the Third Ear Band; David Munrow; The Clemencic Consort; Saint George's Canzona; Rene Zosso; Times and Traditions for Dulcimer; Billy Pigg; Martin Carthy; June Tabor; Peter Bellamy; Music from the Morning of the World; Javanese Court Gamelan Volume 3; The Nonsuch Explorer Series As a Whole; Seamus Ennis; Davie Stewart; A Beuk of Newcassel Sangs; The Northumbrian Minstrelsy; Rhymes of the Northern Bards; The Bay Hotel Folk Club; Ray Fisher; Jane Turriff; Duncan Wiliamson; Robin Williamson; Michael Hurley; The Northumbrian Gathering; Badger in the Bag; Raymond Greenoaken; The Watersons; The Elliots of Birtley; Ewan MacColl; The Bagpipe Museum in Newcastle (nor in Morpeth); The Bridge Folk Club; Strawhead; The Amazing Blondell; the Strawbs; Jean Ritchie; Peggy Seeger; Gentle Giant; Jordi Savall; Willie Scott; Children of the Stones; Aubrey Burl; Janet and Colin Bord; The Readers Digest Book of Folklore and Legends of Britain; Bob Pegg; Mr Fox; Rolf Harris; The Singing Ringing Tree &c. &c.
I think we each carry around our own subjective inner-aesthetic of what Folk is, or means to us, and sometimes we might find someone who is of a similar mind, but I would be wary of anything approaching a concensus. Just look along the thread titles of Mudcat and try to divine the Common Factor.
I agree about ballads, though I might dispute their primary purpose is simply to 'tell a story'; or that 'telling a story' is ever so simple a thing anyway. Stained glass windows might be said to tell a story, but like a ballad, that story will be well known to the listener. Last night I watched Planet of the Apes (1968) for what must have been the 345th time in my life and yet each time it comes out different for me, as stories invariably do as they catch the listener in different ways whatever the agenda (or otherwise) of the original, or the intentions of the teller or the singer. Ballads, like films, move in terms of image and archetype and all manner of occult levels which even the singer won't be aware of. The receptive mind is not passive; the cultural process whirls in ways we might never fully understand, and so stories will mean things we'll never dream of in a million years. So, like all storytelling, it is never so simple a thing as telling a story, even culturally. Every Easter I attend the Catholic Triduum to hear a very old story indeed, one that defines much of what I am despite being an Atheist; likewise at Christmas. I hear ballads in much the same way, but always afresh, so it makes perfect sense to sing them in as fluid a way as possible without labouring 'the story' as such, allowing for the fact that there is always going to be more to it than meets the eye, or ear, or the brain, so correctness is a complete anathema to the nature of the thing, however so entrenched the revival orthodoxy might be, largely thanks to the creative genius of Martin Carthy. That said, though aware of the orthdoxy, I'm not reacting against it; I just do things as they feel right for me to do them, and I really hope that's true of everyone, even those for whom the orthodox way is right.
Do what Thou Wilt - but for God's sake make sure you encourage others in their efforts to do likewise, then we might have something to go on.
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sj
