Is this a folk song?

Subject: RE: Is this a folk song?
From: GUEST,BruceMichael Baillie
Date: 24 Mar 07 - 03:48 AM

Having read this thread I've seen some very good points put forward on both sides of the argument but really kiddies, DOES IT BLOODY MATTER! You do love to have your little arguments don't you!

Subject: RE: Is this a folk song?
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 07:34 PM

incidentally, I would take Mikefule to task on the snippet he mentions in his post above.


the line he quotes is from the (notoriously unreliable) Digitrad

the preferred version is

"Twas pleasant and delightful one midsummer's morn
To view the fine meadows all covered with corn"

and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that imo.

plus, when it comes to the "Larks they sung melodious" bit, there are few moments in folk music to compare with the massed voices of everybody in the audience/singaround.

THAT my friend, is folk music.

Subject: RE: Is this a folk song?
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 07:20 PM

Mikefule, why are you getting so worked up about whether your song is "folk " or not ?

I will tell you the best way to ascertain whether or not your song is "folk" (this only applies to the UK of course, but Mikeyfule is a UK resident)

Send a tape of your song to , say, twenty Folk Club secretaries and ask them if there is a chance of them booking your band for a performance.

If all twenty say "no" then you can rest assured that your song is not in fact "folk".

Doesn't mean it's a bad song, it just means it isn't "folk".

Subject: RE: Is this a folk song?
From: Jim Lad
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 07:17 PM

I was thinking maybe some slide guitar, harmonica .... add a little Dolly Parton.

Subject: RE: Is this a folk song?
From: Don Firth
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 07:15 PM

What I can't figure out is why so many singer-songwriters insist that they are writing folk songs. I suppose they figure that this gives the song some sort if instant "holy status" of some kind.

When someone at an open mike says, "This is a folk song I wrote on the bus yesterday on my way to work," then, no, they're wrong. It's not a folk song. It may be in a "folk style," but it's not a folk song.

If, over a period of time, a number of people hear it, like it, learn it themselves, and sing it a lot, then yes, it may very well be on its way to becoming a folk song.

But what's the bloody rush!?? And why does it matter so much whether it's a folk song or not?

Please tell me. Inquiring minds would like to know.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Is this a folk song?
From: Bee
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 07:14 PM

It would be more likely to become a folk song if, indeed, there was a story line. It seems to be just a complaint about being bored with a factory job. There are hints that the company treats the workers as robots, but no description of how. Up against many labour protest songs, it comes off as a bit of a whiner, really (What? No Black Lung, Shattered Legs, Trapped Miners, Dead-in-a-fire Factory Girls?).

Subject: RE: Is this a folk song?
From: GUEST,wordy
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 07:09 PM

In the 60's and 70's it would have been, but as you can see from the above posts the Puritan fundamentalists have taken over and will not allow it.
Of course it's folk music. It's a song about the folks that isn't aimed at the charts, isn't about "lurve" and can't be sung by Rappers, Divas, Pretty Boys etc because the media wouldn't allow it.
That's where these songs are stuck,, between the hard place of the folk fundamentalists and the rock of the controlled media.
We aren't supposed to carry on the tradition of singing about our lives by either of them. Both would deny us a platform.
Maybe it's best to not bother and sell-out to a vested interest.

Subject: RE: Is this a folk song?
From: GUEST, Mikefule
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 07:08 PM

<>

Ah, so "It was pleasant and delightful on a midsummer's morn
When the fields and the meadows were all covered in corn" isn't "obvious"?

After 25 years in and around folk music I thought one of the endearing characteristics was that the words are often nonsense.

Must be the "great tune" bit I missed. I could listen to "Shepherd's Hey" all day, myself. I'm sure you're the same.

It is no wonder that folk music is so marginalised when many of those people who claim to care most about it so often make it as exclusive, elitist and as closely-defined as they possibly can.

Billy Bragg: accepted as folk (be it ever so grudgingly). Working class hero, sings some political stuff. Amplify the instruments and make it a bit louder: oh, it's dismissed as thump thump thump, no tune you can whistle and you can't hear the words.

Meanwhile, millions of ordinary people get on with their ordinary customs, music, and day to day life, failing to realise that they no longer qualify as "folk".

Subject: RE: Is this a folk song?
From: stallion
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 07:08 PM

mmmmmmmmmmm I have issues labelling any music, anyway, sometimes music is of it's time and doesn't last, some does, so then we have the delivery (of the message)and I suppose the Genre of folk was set by Carthy et al and contemporary folk by Dylan et al. my view, for what it is worth, is that if people sing it in the pub or around the kitchen table it's what folk are singing, folk music.

Subject: RE: Is this a folk song?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 07:07 PM

It's a good start of a song that has meaning and a good subject matter. It won't be a folk song until the "folk" start singing it for a number of years.

I'd like to see the song developed by going somewhere as in a story line rather than a complaint repeated. It could be that the character singing the song has a history that could be shown. Also, you switch from "I" to "we" which is confusing. You might stick to an "I".

No, writing a contemporary song about working conditions doesn't yet qualify it even though the subject matter can be found in labor songs. It needs to be set in motion and people need to pick it up and want to sing it and perhaps tinker with it so that it has variants. Then it becomes a folk song.

I think that if you just write a song, it may or may not catch on. But until it does, it's not really a folk song. It doesn't need to hit the charts as a pop song but there has to be a sub-culture to keep it going such as a work crew that passes it on down to the next generation.

I'm in favor of writing these kinds of songs however because as is said in one of the famous folk songs about man vrs. the machine, "A man ain't nothin' but a man and before I let that steam drill beat me down, I'll die with a hammer in my hand."

Frank Hamilton

Subject: RE: Is this a folk song?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 07:02 PM

'Mikefule' has obviously decided that the song he refers to IS folk - now he wants someone else (preferably an 'expert' or 'authority') to agree with him and to take responsibility for his decision.

Please have the courage of your convictions, Mr 'Mikefule', if you think it's folk, you call it folk - but don't automatically expect that everyone else is going to fall into line and equally automatically agree with your decision.

Alternatively, if you're disatisfied with that outcome, why don't you do the research and read the books (you'll find them listed on this site as well as others)? It's ultimately down to you to decide.

Subject: RE: Is this a folk song?
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 06:30 PM

Listen to Guest Mikefule's band Here and then say if this is folk music

Subject: RE: Is this a folk song?
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 06:19 PM

One thing is for sure! Those lyrics are far too obvious. Of course, a great tune could add to their impact.

Subject: RE: Is this a folk song?
From: skipy
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 06:15 PM

I,ve never heard a song written by a horse!
(quoted)
Skipy

Subject: RE: Is this a folk song?
From: greg stephens
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 06:15 PM

No it isn't. But it might become so.(my definition). Of course, it may well be already,according to someone else's definition.It's not classical either, according to my definition.

Subject: RE: Is this a folk song?
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 06:06 PM

I didn't ask, is it traditional - obviously it isn't - but is it folk.

As the consensus is that it isn't, can someone explain to me why a working class person writing a sincere and meaningful song about the working conditions in the industry in their own working class community, and performing it to a mainly working class audience isn't "folk"?

And mentioning the name of the band spoiled the point I was making.

I write as the son of a time-served joiner, and grandson of a factory worker; and on the other side, the son of a farmer's daughter, and whose grandmother was one of 13 children who all worked on the farm before they reached their teens. I am horrified to think that I may be the first person in several generations of my family not to be "authentic".

Subject: RE: Is this a folk song?
From: Scoville
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 05:03 PM

I say "not yet; wait and see". The song itself is not traditional but could be part of a tradition of songs that complain about life in crappy jobs ("Diamond Joe" the cowboy version, "the Jute Mill Song" if you will accept it, Hedy West's "Cotton-Mill Girls", etc.).

Subject: RE: Is this a folk song?
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 04:59 PM

Mikefule, what you fail do understand is that folk songs were never composed by anybody.

They just came into existence mysteriously, ethereally, one day they didn't exist and the next day everybody was singing them.

It's a bit like the opening scene in "2001" when the apes wake up one morning and find this big black obelisk standing in front of them.

That's the same as folk songs, they didn't get composed, they just appeared out of nowhere.

Subject: RE: Is this a folk song?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 04:53 PM

No. Read the definition.

Subject: RE: Is this a folk song?
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 04:50 PM

You can't write folk songs with a name like the Anti Nowhere League
imo

Subject: RE: Is this a folk song?
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 04:42 PM

Nope,
Folk is traditional - otherwise, difine folk
Jim Carroll

Subject: Is this a folk song?
From: GUEST,Mikefule
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 04:28 PM

So of this song was written and performed by someone from a social background where the issues discussed in the song are directly relevant day to day, and who is still performing similar songs to mainly working class audiences in pubs and small clubs 30 years into a musical career, are these the lyrics of a folk song? If not, why not? Discuss. (I said "folk", not "traditional".



I get up at 8, I'm feeling so mechanical
I'm in a trance, I'm watching the time
There's no need to think what kind of a day it it
They're all the same, come rain or shine

Chorus
We're all here and we're working for the company
We have no minds as the day goes by
We're all here and we're working for the company
We have no minds till the day that we die

I go down to the gates, and into the factory
I take my card, number 49
I make my way through the jungles of machinery
I take my place on the production line

The same old job, the same old monotony
The same old faces, day after day
Is this career, is this insanity?
I have to work, and it's insane

"We just want to see you on the factory floor
We don't want to hear what you say
So shut your mouth, get on with your work
Or you will be leaving today"

I think that I should, I know when I'm happy
My mind is a dustbin, so full of insanity
I tried to believe in the fact that I'm leaving
I fight for my rights but I just can't be leaving today