Source Singers

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: BB
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 05:38 PM

Ruth, my apologies. I had glanced at an ad. recently, which I mistakenly took to be an ad. for their CD but which was, in fact, for their CD launch.

I will reserve judgement about how much they've been influenced by the revival until I have actually heard them.

Sorry.

Barbara

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 02:40 PM

How about honest?

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: r.padgett
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 02:11 PM

See told you, will last for ever this!

Even contributions from Steve Gardham and Dave Eyre!!

We perhaps need a term to cover the category of "revival traditional singers" ~ in my opinion ~ as opposed to "source singers" and "traditional singers" or does "folksinger" cover this?

I ain't even gonna attempt to define any of these terms

Ray

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: GUEST,Tom Bliss
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 08:55 AM

Yes nicely put Brian.

To this bit Paul "is this to inform how a song "should" be performed?" I'd say yes to 'inform' but no to 'should.' The more you study how things were done in the past, the more options you have as craftsman. You don't have to use a wooden plane to make your new dulcimer, and it wouldn't sound any different if you did, but you might enjoy using one, and some might enjoy knowing that you'd done so.

I'm no musicologist or folklorist, but I do enjoy encountering that knowledge, and doing my own little bits of research, and I do know it informs my writing, my playing - and even (given that I have totally the wrong type of larynx and am not trying to do it 'right' anyway) at times my singing. But it doesn't control any of those things - because I'm also influenced by loads of other stuff which I also value equally. That's my choice, (and I get or don't get bookings accordingly)!

T

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 07:27 AM

Thanks Brian,

I am contributing to three threads at the moment:

Do me Ama, The Blackleg Miner and this one.

Brain has put his finger right on the issue in question:

"I can't understand why anyone would choose to sing those songs without being at least mildly curious about where they came from, who composed them, who actually sang them a century or more ago. In both cases it turns out that their provenance is murky, with probable or definite editorial intervention by Ewan MacColl and Bert Lloyd respectively. That doesn't mean that they're not worth singing, but it does mean that I would feel the need to be careful about introducing either song to an audience with words like "Here's an old song that Lancashire cotton mill workers used to sing."

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: Brian Peters
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 06:56 AM

Banjiman wrote:

1: "OK, I understand that there is a need to catolouge (as with stamps) but what do we hope this will tell us? Is it about the correct/ original context of the song, evolution or something I'm missing?"

Yes to your second sentence. Tradsinger and Tom B. have already answered this partly, but to me it's a simple matter of human curiosity. For instance, my early experience of the folk world was in North West folk clubs (particularly Harry Boardman's), where the 'local tradition' was seen in terms of the songs of the cotton mills and other industries. Two of the best-known songs of that genre - both of which I've been known to sing - are "The Four Loom Weaver" and "The Handweaver and the Factory Maid". I can't understand why anyone would choose to sing those songs without being at least mildly curious about where they came from, who composed them, who actually sang them a century or more ago. In both cases it turns out that their provenance is murky, with probable or definite editorial intervention by Ewan MacColl and Bert Lloyd respectively. That doesn't mean that they're not worth singing, but it does mean that I would feel the need to be careful about introducing either song to an audience with words like "Here's an old song that Lancashire cotton mill workers used to sing."

2: "Is this to inform how a song "should" be performed?"

Some people who have spent a lot of time listening to traditional/source singers find it more difficult to enjoy the efforts of modern performers (particularly with respect to things like accompaniment, pace, storytelling, etc.). All of us have our own ideas about how songs should be performed (usually defined as the way we do it ourselves), but most of us are aware that these are only opinions. Telling someone that the way they're singing is 'wrong' is plain bad manners. Suggesting to that person that they might enjoy listening to a particular performance - perhaps a 'source' version, perhaps not - would be a bit more subtle.

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: The Sandman
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 05:02 AM

Jim,
Tradsingers comment,But one with which I agree.
I think Tradsinger meant those that wish to sing,I dont think he /she meant that singing should be forced,on people who do not wish to do it.
Dick Miles

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: GUEST,Tom Bliss
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 04:45 AM

I tend to use two analogies to explain the importance of provenance in songs (other tradarts).

Archaeology is a good one to explain why we need to know who passed what to whom and when and how (oral, print, recording etc). That can be academic, but also visceral. Like bringing up an Elizabethan breastplate from 30 meteres and knowing we were the first to see it since the man wearing it went down with his ship. Some songs can give you that.

But perhaps an appreciation for antiques is more universal. You can admire the workmanship and materials of a Tudor chair, but the patina is also crucial, because it tells you about where that chair has been, and you think of who has sat in it, and how they lived. And it may be worth more than a Victorian carver with more wood, and more decoration. Some will like one, some the other - and others still will prefer the modern reproduction because its new, or even the Ikea one because they saw it on Property Ladder. But they all keep your arse off the floor.

So yes - singing them is vital, but always make sure you credit where it came from, so those who want or need to track back can do so.

Tom

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 03:59 AM

"The important thing is to keep singing."
Dear Cap'n,
Why do you insist in forcing your own priorities onto others.
I wouldn't attempt to start making a list of people who don't sing, can't sing, don't wish to sing, find singing a chore, can't afford the time to practice singing and will never make singers while they have holes in their arses, yet without whose contribution, we wouldn't have any songs to sing or to listen to.
Suggesting that the only activity important to the future of folksong is singing is somewhat arrogant, bullying and tunnel visionsed.
A MODEST PROPOSAL
Why not do your own thing and allow the rest of us to get on with ours.
When push comes to shove, all you are entitled to state is what is important TO YOU!
All the very best wishes in your endevours,
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: Banjiman
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 05:20 PM

Tradsinger,

I'm not sure if your post was a reply to my questions, but I found your post hugely informative, thanks. I think you explained your motivation for collecting extremely eloquently.

As someone who tends to be drawn to songs purely for how the "performance" of them makes me feel, think etc (I am pretty agnostic to the songs source, I don't mind if they are trad or written yesterday just that I think they are good songs), I start to understand why the provenance of a song is important to others.

Paul

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: The Sandman
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 05:07 PM

The important thing is to keep singing.
Jim Carroll,there is nothing more to be said,tradsinger said it succinctly in seven words.
Dick Miles

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: Tradsinger
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 03:29 PM

I find this a very interesting thread, and from the varied replies it is obvious that you cannot pigeonhole singers simply as revival or traditional. It's a lot greyer than that. In my collecting activities I have recorded singers who learnt their songs from a variety of sources, including friends, family, 78 rpm records, etc. I show more interest in the songs which have come through an oral tradition simply because, as someone said above, there is an element of 'musical archeology' in this subject. If an illiterate traveller sings to me, say, 'The Cruel Ship's Carpenter', then that gives me a buzz to think that I am hearing something which has been handed down like an heirloom. However, for aught I know, that song might have been learnt from a printed broadside 2 generations previously! So what I am saying? Well, what I think I am saying is that in order to understand the 'folk process' we need to take a broad look at a singer's repertoire, background, motivation and singing context, and not just note the songs.

So where does that leave us? Well, I learnt 'Around her leg she wore a yellow garter' from oral tradition. Does that make me a traditional singer? Perhaps half of one percent of one. I sing songs I recorded from source singers - does that make me a source singer myself? Think about - I am just one link in a chain, as was my source singer. Some of the gypsy singers I recorded learnt some of their songs from George Formby and Jimmie Rogers 78s - does that remove their credentials as 'source singers'?

I think what it comes to it is this - by source singers, we are talking about people who have not learnt their songs from the folk revival or the media. However, there will be numerous exceptions to this.

This is a bit rambling, but I hope it shows that it is dangerous to label singers one way or the other. I have been collecting for 40 year and I am still not sure of the answer.

The important thing is to keep singing.

Tradsinger

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: Banjiman
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 03:23 PM

Ruth Thanks,

I don't think I've managed to ask the question I really want an answer to yet. I'll try again!

OK, I understand that there is a need to catolouge (as with stamps) but what do we hope this will tell us? Is it about the correct/ original context of the song, evolution or something I'm missing?

Is this to inform how a song "should" be performed?

Or is it just the (usually) male need to have the biggest collection, the rarest, the best.......?

Or is it a desire to somehow "own" the song because you collected it from the source singer?

I'm not looking for confrontation here, I'm just genuinely interested in what is the motivation to "collect".

Thanks

Paul

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 03:07 PM

I think we're trying to record the steps along the way. It will certainly help those collecotrs that come along in 100 years' time!

Re the Coppers: while they were clearly influenced by the revival, the method by which their family songs have been transmitted makes them part of the tradition. I think.

"I also wondered about some of the younger generation folk artists that the Young Coppers have on their CD."

Like who? I have the CD, and all I hear are Coppers...

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: Banjiman
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 02:49 PM

Thanks Tom,

So are we trying to track how a song evolved.....or something else?

Paul

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: BB
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 02:48 PM

Excellently put, Tom. And I wasn't necessarily being critical of what the Young Coppers (or for that matter, Fred Jordan) were doing, just stating what I see as fact.

Barbara

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: GUEST, Richard Bridge
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 01:34 PM

I am glad to see you say that Tom. And well put, too.

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: GUEST,Tom Bliss
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 12:54 PM

Hi Paul

Well in terms of the quality of the songs as music, and the singers as music-makers it doesn't matter at all, so all we need to do is make sure the songs are sung (and to respect the singers interpreters though the years and the original writers).

But - and it's a biggie - folk music has an element of 'musical archaeology ' (which is sometimes as or even more important than the quality). So just as the Time Team must record as they dig and know what it is they are looking at, so we need to know how these influences work if we're to track back with any reliability.

Tom

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: Banjiman
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 12:25 PM

"It has been almost impossible, I think, for the 'revival' not to influence the 'tradition' at least from Fred Jordan onwards."

A genuine question.......why does this matter? Surely as long as the songs survive (and evolve as they always have)........?

Paul

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: BB
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 12:23 PM

I also wondered about some of the younger generation folk artists that the Young Coppers have on their CD.

It has been almost impossible, I think, for the 'revival' not to influence the 'tradition' at least from Fred Jordan onwards.

Barbara

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: Folknacious
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 07:50 PM

Genuinely puzzled question and not a wind-up:

Where do the Young Coppers fit in all this? Was there a point down the Copper generations (perhaps after Bob) that they changed from being traditional/ source singers to revivalists? I read somewhere that John Copper was influenced back into the family tradition by Pete Bellamy.

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: GUEST,Steve Gardham
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 05:57 PM

Dave,
I'm stickin' me neck out 'ere and am willing to be shot down in flames but I'm gonna say definitely not for similar reasons to why I don't count myself as a source/traditional singer. (And I also know you're stirring it/ playing devil's advocate as usual because United beat City on Saturday)
You came to the carols as someone steeped in the revival otherwise you probably wouldn't have shown any interest in them. You have become heavily involved but more as a historian and archivist, or as some would say an 'incomer' or 'interferer'.
As folklorists/researchers whatever, however we get involved in what's going on we are still coming at it from a different angle.
Well that's my twopennorth.

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 03:03 PM

I honestly don't know Dave.
Is everybody who goes out on St Stephen's Day in Dingle and joins in the 'Wran' song, or sings on May Day at Padstow a source singer?
All of these communal events are unique, very different from the act of hearing, adapting and passing on the songs in the usual 'traditional' way.
It's a question I've never considered - thanks.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: Folkiedave
Date: 19 Apr 08 - 08:38 PM

The "Sheffield Carols" for a quick shorthand way of desribing the traditional carol singing that takes place in Sheffield aound Xmas time is generally accpeted as traditional singing.

I have never learnt the songs except by listening to oral singing by the community in which I (almost by a mile or so live) and anyway - it used to happen in my local twice or so each Xmas.

I first started going to a carol singing pub within twenty minutes walk from my house.

Apart from the fact I am a hopeless singer - does that make me a traditional singer?

And if not, why not?

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: GUEST,Steve Gardham
Date: 19 Apr 08 - 03:55 PM

Whilst source singers and revival singers are fairly easy to define and identify there are a number of singers who have/had a foot firmly planted in both areas. Bob Copper is probably the best example. He was source singer, collector, and revival. Even somebody like Fred Jordan who initially sang his family songs, learnt songs as part of the revival and was heavily influenced by the revival and was in some ways a parody of himself. Some of the singers who we think of today as source singers started out learning their songs from their own culture, but now are more involved in the revival. Jim was right about England, there are are now very few purely source singers left alive. Even the Scottish travellers have for a long while been heavily influenced by the revival, some of the more celebrated augmenting their ballads with versions from books. These are not criticisms, merely observations. The revival is a new tradition, but it is a tradition, and it has its own peculiarities mostly quite different from the older oral tradition.

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Apr 08 - 02:40 PM

Les,
It would be interesting to start making a list to see who people have in mind.
Barbara,
Quite agree - can't think of anything else at the moment.
jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: BB
Date: 19 Apr 08 - 01:45 PM

"I have honestly never seen anything wrong with the term 'Song' or 'Song Club' - plain enough, no pretensions - it would certainly work for me."

That's fine if that's all that's going on at that club - but misleading if there's music, stories, etc. as well.

Barbara

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 19 Apr 08 - 01:34 PM

Thanks Jim, that's a start.

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Apr 08 - 12:33 PM

Hello Les,
Don't know the number exactly (by my definition) but would say there are very few in the UK; probably more in Ireland as the tradition went on much later here.
Thanks to the intervention by the revival and the academics at the School of Scottish Studies and Elphinstone, Scotland seems to be the best off, particularly among the Travellers.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 19 Apr 08 - 12:13 PM

................ er ........ do we have any idea how many people can currently be describes as Source Singers?

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Apr 08 - 11:20 AM

Paul,
MacColl always resisted calling any club he was associated with 'folk' or 'traditional' because he felt it would be to restrictive, and he never claimed his own compositions, which made up at least a quarter of an evenings performance, as 'folk - hence the name 'Singers Club'.
I have honestly never seen anything wrong with the term 'Song' or 'Song Club' - plain enough, no pretensions - it would certainly work for me.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: Banjiman
Date: 19 Apr 08 - 08:38 AM

Jim,

OK help me out here.....do you have a suggestion of what to call the mix of music I have described above? People would need to understand it and it needs to be no more than a couple of words!

Singer/ songwriter...no it isn't all and anyway that would immediately turn off a group of people (who like traditional music)who may well like some of what we are doing.

Acoustic.....well yes it is, but this term is already used to describe something different, again usually singer/songwriter stuff with a more introspective take than the recently penned folky stuff that I am talking about (Think "Fiddler's Green", listen to "The Visitor" on Wendy's site above as well).

Help!

Paul

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Apr 08 - 08:35 AM

Sorry,
Meant to add - defining a singer or song is just that - it is not (though it is often regarded so) an attempt to be judgmental or critical.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Apr 08 - 08:02 AM

Banjiman - Paul, (sorry - confusing you with Banjovey - an old friend)
No,
Without opening up interminable arguments; if I am away from home and I read in the local paper that there is an evening of folk-song at the local pub - I want to be certain that if I switch off the telly, go out in the pissing rain and walk though cold dark, damp streets, I am not going to be treated to an evening of 'Knees Up Mother Brown', 'Circles of my Mind', 'Heartbreak Hotel'... et al. This is not to say any or all of these don't have merit, I just like to know what I'm buying.
When we first visited the West of Ireland in the early seventies (in the middle of the 'ballad boom') I thought all my birthdays had come at once at the number of pubs advertising 'ballad nights'.
My point is, and has been for some time now, that much of the revival is very greatly out-of-step with the tradition in defining what they mean by traditional/folk music (whatever label we choose).
You win more people for your ideas by slugging them out rather than watering them down; and when push comes to shove the man in the street couldn't give a toss one way or the other what you call it.
I think we've argued this before, but genealogy will always be an 'alogy' until it is defined differently, and the idea of 'popularising' folk by wrapping it up in pretty paper and re-labeling it eventually did more damage than good to the general understanding.
Here in Ireland good, well-played, uncompromising traditional music is on the crest of a wave thanks to the doggedness of a tiny handful of stubborn old bastards who, twenty-odd years ago, would have been thrown out of a pub if they had dared to take a fiddle out - and as for pipes - the governor would have called in the vermin-control people.
The singing pullovers, Moving Hearts, The Bothy Band, Planxty, the 'ballad' singers and navel contemplaters have all been and gone and, thanks to people like Junior Crehan, Michael Doherty, Brendan McGlichy, Joe Ryan, John Kelly, Joe Heany and all the other 'purists' we can now sit back and listen to the best of the music. In this small town last St Pat's day 2 local music teachers, both young women, managed to turn out around 60-70 pupils all playing good traditional music on an assortment of pipes, fiddles, flutes, whistles, concertinas.... etc, so we are pretty confident that the music is in safe hands for at least another generation.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: Banjiman
Date: 19 Apr 08 - 06:33 AM

Jim,

I understand that from a song collection point of view that categorisation is important, I'm not suggesting otherwise.

I'm also (and never would) argue that contemporary songs are traditional.

My point is that we have different needs from the terminology we use....mine is to try and communicate to as wide a number of people as possible to get them interested in something they might like.

Yours (I think, again, please correct me if I'm wrong) is to be as specific as possible to preserve and understand traditions as clearly as possible. I accept that this as at least as (and probably more) worthwhile than what I'm doing.

Ask a person in the street what is meant by folk music....and you'll get many different responses....I need to try and interest all those people. Giving them a lecture on what is and isn't folk music is not the starting point to getting them involved.

"Col - whoops Banjiman." The subtlety of this one is lost on me???

Paul

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Apr 08 - 05:48 AM

Col - whoops Banjiman.
Can I just re-iterate a point I have made before.
Definition is not just a subject discussed by academics and researchers.
Our problem is we have very little information on how traditional singers considered themselves and their songs - collectors in general never thought it worth the bother recording such information, assuming largely that they never thought about what they sang (free as birdsong).
Although our own work on this was really too little - too late, this was not our experience. The singers we broached the subject with, mainly Tom Lenihan, Walter Pardon and Mikeen McCarthy were highly vocal and (certainly in Walter's case) extremely articulate on what constituted traditional and other songs, though they might not have chosen thsoe words exactly.
They all descriminated and catergorised what they sung and how they sang it in one way or another
Jim Carroll
PS Thank you and hello Steve

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: GUEST,Steve Gardham
Date: 19 Apr 08 - 04:23 AM

Jim,
As a collector, researcher, singer, may I echo all that you have said.
I learnt songs from my own family repertoire in the sixties, BUT only after hearing The Watersons singing them in a folk club. Although I still sing my family repertoire I would never consider myself a source singer. I am 100% a product of the revival.

Steve Gardham

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: Banjiman
Date: 19 Apr 08 - 04:23 AM

Sorry Richard, we cross posted or I would have addressed my reply to you also.

Enjoy the shopping!

Paul

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: Banjiman
Date: 19 Apr 08 - 04:19 AM

Shimrod,

No I'm not looking to attack anyone (though I may have been known to defend myself vigorously when attacked!).

I think a more interesting question than "what is folk", is why you want to/need to define "folky" music in a particular way. What is the purpose of your definition.

Jim's post above does an excellent job in explaining why he thinks it is important to have very clear terms and derfinitions.....I would say (and I'm sure he will tell me if I'm wrong), from a scholarly, academic point of view (and I'm not accusing him of being a museum curator) I get his point.

I come form a slightly different (probably less pure) place than this. Most of my activities are involved in "selling" (with a small S) folky music to people in my role as a Folk Club Organiser (KFFC) and as my wife's (Wendy Arrowsmith) unpaid agent.

Both of these endeavorers involve packaging a mixture of traditional, self penned and interpretations of other peoples songs into something that "people" want to see/ buy. I need a handy (if academically incorrect)label for this....hence my use of the word folk. To call it anything else would confuse my market places even more than using this term.

Just a thought what do you call your vacuum cleaner? I bet you call it a hoover even if it is not?

Paul

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: GUEST, Richard Bridge
Date: 19 Apr 08 - 04:18 AM

Sorry if I was short. I half suspected I was the one accused of being sarky. Did you find the 1954 definition Banjiman? It's on here in several threads. I think if you go carefully over it line by line you will see that it makes a decent stab at distinguishing the body of inherited music from created music, testing by reason of the fact of passage into an oral tradition, yet allowing for the ingestion of new music into that oral tradition. Of course after Brasser Copper, the Coppers did not transmit orally, but via written songbooks, so the idea of oral transmission (without writing) as the touchstone becomes questionable.

I don't necessarily agree that purely oral transmission is the be-all and end-all of it - but that form of transmission does exist still. There are two songs that I do that I only ever heard sung once, and indeed in both cases before I became a performer (if I am). In both cases after I became a performer (if I did) I decided I wanted to do them and reconstructed tehm out of memory. But both had a logical progression that made the rebuilds easy. One is "The Frog and the Vicar". The other is "The 5 Constipated men".

I suppose that the singers I heard sing them had learned them from somewhere, the first probably off vinyl, but the latter more likely as a rugby or drinking song. My point is that if I can learn at least some songs well enough from one listening to be able later to work the song out and perform it, others probably still can too, so "oral transmission" is not necessarily dead.

Must make a list and go shopping.

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Apr 08 - 03:55 AM

I get rather bored with being told that these discussions are 'unnecessary' and 'boring' and 'pedantic' - if people are not interested in the subject, fair enough, go and discuss something else.
It is often my experience that those who make such claims are usually the ones to whom definitions are extremely important - try telling one of them that they are 'not' a traditional singer - and stand back and watch them throw their toys out of the pram! Categorising your singers is about as 'pedantic' as putting the word 'mushroom' on a tin of soup.
Personally, my involvement in traditional singing requires that I have a reasonably clear picture of what is 'revival and 'traditional' (and everything that comes in between). My singing a traditional song no more makes me a 'traditional singer' than my singing Nessun Dorma in the bath makes me an opera singer. For me, the terms we use to describe the singers are efforts to define where they stand in relation to the living oral tradition (that once was - and is no more!)
Of the singers we met and recorded, some were 'traditional' (ie: had been around when the singing tradition, within the defined communities we were working in, was still alive and kicking (Walter Pardon, Tom Lenihan, Mary Delaney, Mikeen McCarthy et al) - others were not. Some of these latter had learned their songs from traditional singers, but had not been around when the songs were still in use, and in some cases had never sung the songs publicly, but rather, had remembered them. It is these we need the descriptive terms for if we are going to discuss the tradition and everything it encompasses.
MacColl used, (and coined, I think) the term 'song carrier' for his series of 10 programmes of that name (still the best ever done on traditional singing in these islands IMO). In doing so he upset a number of people, but, as far as I'm concerned, it's a good, catch-all term for somebody who didn't come to a traditional repertoire via the revival or through those bloody 'singing lessons' at school. 'Source singer' or 'tradition bearer' works just as well I suppose, though the latter is possibly more useful to include music, dancing, customs, lore and stories.
Mary H:
All collectors make, and have always made judgements of one sort or another - they'd be daft not to. They set out to collect what they believe to be 'folk-songs' and in order not to come home with 20 versions of 'Yellow Submarine', they apply their definition to their work - most of the time, in my view, they have made a pretty reasonable stab at it. Sharp, Baring-Gould and all the others of that generation are to be congratulated for collecting songs they didn't approve of (even if, for one reason or another they didn't publish them).
In the end it all comes down to a personal perception of the tradition, and also the time, opportunity and budget you have at your disposal - let's face it, if you were a part-time collector faced with having to make a choice, what would you rather come home with; a version of Lord Gregory or ten of 'The Miner's Dream of Home'?
A good 'folk song collector' records as much as he or she is able to, given the restrictions they are working under. If they are social or musical historians or ethnomusicologists, that's a totally different ball game.
Cap'n,
You still have a very superficial and inaccurate concept of what collecting is about.
The best collectors I know of; Bruce Jackson, The Lomaxs, Sandy Ives, Hamish Henderson, Ken Goldstein, Parker and MacColl, recorded far more than 'good versions of songs'. As well as doing just that, they provided us with information that gave us an insight into our oral tradition - priceless as far as I'm concerned.
Your comparison between recording 'revival' and 'traditional' singers because (in your opinion) the former may be 'better' singers with 'better' songs is really not what it is all about. Comparisons between the technical abilities of an octogenarian source singer and revival singers with all their bits in good working order totally misses the point, and is bloody unfair to boot! Anyway, as good as a revival singer is, I have yet to hear one who brings anything nearly as 'good' and 'important' as the contribution made (to my enjoyment and understanding at least), by Phil Tanner, Sam Larner or Mary Ann Carolan, as far past their sell-by date as these might have been.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 19 Apr 08 - 03:51 AM

Dear Banjiman,

Thank you very much for your considered reply.

My point was that some previous posters have asked ingenuous seeming questions and then, when others have replied, have turned on them and accused them of being bigots, folk police etc. It occurred to me that such posters had already decided what 'folk is' but wanted other contributors to confirm their preconceived ideas; when such confirmation failed to materialise they turned 'nasty'. I find such behaviour dishonest.

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: Banjiman
Date: 18 Apr 08 - 06:38 PM

Shimrod,

Yes, I've been over the those previous threads and debates elsewhere.

1/ Before reading the Mudcat debates I would have called songs of a folky style (I'll give examples if you wish, but I don't mean overly emotional singer/ songwriter stuff)....folk. I accept now that this may not be technically correct, but it was the masses would understand. I've been challenged previously to come up with a definition that encompasses these songs/ performers, but haven't managed it yet!

2/ Ditto, my view is that if it sounds like folk it is folk. But again I am willing to accept this is a common man's view of the subject, not a scholar's.

3/ I think I answered with 1 and 2 above.

My questions to Richard are a genuine attempt to learn and understand, not a challenge....and I don't really want the what is folk debate again!

Paul

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 18 Apr 08 - 06:31 PM

Thank you Shimrod

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 18 Apr 08 - 05:59 PM

Banjiman,

Assuming you've read all the previous threads on this subject (I fervently hope that you have and we're not doomed to repeat it all again!) and that you've read around the subject, outside of Mudcat, as well, what do you think the answers to those questions are?

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: GUEST, Richard Bridge
Date: 18 Apr 08 - 08:32 AM

I think I acquired the distinction from an article by or about Martin Carthy, a long time ago.


1. Singer-songwriters, or acoustic performers - but IMHO an new term that accurately describes new material in the genre of the old is desperately needed so that people can stop saying "folk" when they mean something else.

2. When it meets the 1954 definition (although some attention might be needed to amend the definition so that it does not automatically exclude items of known authorship or items first published in printed form, which I have heard asserted to exclude "the Cutty Wren")

3. See above. It is not a matter of style or form, although the music encyclopaedias will set out characteristics of form, scales or modes used, and language that are found. Those are matters of observation not definition.

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: Banjiman
Date: 18 Apr 08 - 06:31 AM

"The technically accurate term is "folk singer" and a revivalist is a "folk song singer". But I don't suppose anyone cares."

OK, reasonable definitions (if you need definitions!) but:

1/what do we call those who are writing and singing songs that might (or might not) become folksongs of the future?

2/....and when does something become a folk song?

3/ Can something still become a folk song, what are the characteristics?

Paul

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: Surreysinger
Date: 18 Apr 08 - 06:24 AM

Question ... Martyn Wyndham-Read, who used to live on the Lyne estate (former home of Lucy Broadwood) learned the song "The Sweet Nightingale" or "The Birds in the Spring" from Captain Evelyn Broadwood (Lucy's nephew, and owner of the estate in the early to mid 20th century), who in turn had learned the song from his aunt... who had collected the song from George Grantham, the illiterate carter who had lived on the estate in the late 19th century .... so Martyn had learned the song by oral transmission in a line which ran directly from the "original" singer (who presumably had learned it from elsewhere) .... does that therefore make Martyn a source singer in this instance ???

Retires hurriedly after lighting blue touchpaper (muttering ... I'm not sure that it really matters. It's an interesting point, but what matters is the song and its onward transmission and not the singer...)

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: GUEST,doc.tom
Date: 18 Apr 08 - 06:17 AM

I'm with Ruth. If you don't clarify what you are talking about, others can have no idea what you are talking about. If you don't want to clarify what you're talking about, that's fine, of course, but don't expect anybody to take what you say seriously except others who like no definition.

Tom

Subject: RE: Source Singers
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 08:24 PM

Singers today may--or may not--be the source singers of tomorrow. Problem is, you can't tell. There's such a thing as perspective.