How traditional should it be?

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 25 Nov 08 - 09:56 AM

Right, this is for Myssha - notes from a seminar I went to decades ago.....

Folk Song in England

In 1954 the International Folk Music Council adopted this definition:—

"Folk music is the product of a musical tradition that has been evolved through the process of oral transmission.

The factors that shape the tradition are:
(i)         Continuity which links the present with the past:
(ii)        Variation which springs from the creative impulse of the individual or group:
(iii)        Selection by the community, which determines the form or forms in which the music survives.

The term can be applied to music that has been evolved from the rudimentary beginnings by a community uninfluenced by popular music and art music, and it can likewise be applied to the music which has originated with an individual composer and has subsequently been absorbed into the unwritten living tradition of a community.

The term does not cover composed popular music that has been taken over ready—made by a community and remains unchanged, for it is the refashioning and recreation of the music by the community that gives its folk character.



'Conclusions', by Cecil Sharp~

A folk song is always anonymous.
Modal melodies, set to secular words, are nearly always of folk origin.
Song tunes in the minor mode are either composed tunes, or folk airs that have suffered corruption.
Folk tunes do not modulate.
Folk melodies are non—harmonic: that is to say, they have been fashioned by those in whom the harmonic sense is undeveloped. This is shown:—

a.        in the use of non—harmonic passing notes.
b.        in a certain vagueness of tonality, especially in the opening phrases of modal tunes.
c.        in the use of flattened seventh, after the manner of a leading note, in the final cadence of modal airs.
d.        in the difficulty of harmonizing a folk tune.
e.        Folk melodies often contain bars of irregular length.
f.        Prevalence of five and seven time-measures in folk airs.

In giving evidence in 1835, Francis Place reported that ballads sung about the streets during his youth could not be adequately described in present company. 'I have given you in writing words of some common ballads which you would not think fit to have uttered here. At that time the songs were of the most indecent kind: they were publicly sung and sold in the streets and markets: no one would mention them in any society now!



Another consideration.

"The mind of the folk singer is occupied exclusively with the words, with the clearness of which he will allow nothing to interfere. Consequently, he but rarely sings more than one note to a syllable and will often. interpolate a syllable of his own rather than break this rule.

"O abroad as I was wordelkin'
I was walking all alone
When I heard a couple tordelkin'
As they walked all along"



The Greek/Mediaeval/Folk Song Modes ~

The scales on which many English folk tunes are based are not the same as those with which we arc familiar through classical music.
The Greeks were the earliest musical grammarians in Europe and laid the foundation of the scientific system which was to be, in a modified form, our inheritance for plainsong and folk song.

        There were seven Greek Modes        (The white notes on a piano).
Dorian (Plato considered this the strongest)        D to D
Phrygian.        E to E
Lydian        F to F
Mixolydian        C to C
Aeolian        A to A
Locrian        B to B
lonian (our major modeNodus lascivus)        C to C

"Sumer is a--cumen in", our oldest Mss is in the Ionian Mode.

English folk tunes are most frequently found cast in the Dorian, Phrygian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Ionian modes. Occasionally in the minor: Cecil Sharp wrote: "The majority of our English -folk times, say two~thirds, are in the major mode. The remaining third is fairly evenly divided between the Mixolydian, Dorian and Aeolian modes, with, perhaps, a preponderance in favour of the Mixolydian,

The pitch of the mode may of course be varied, the relationship of the notes being constant.



The Pentatonic_Scale

The pentatonic scale (five notes to the octave) is widely distributed in folk music and is found in the traditional music of many oriental countries. We also know that it was practiced in ancient times in China and Greece. It is common in Scotland and Ireland.

In its most common form it possesses no semitones, the intervals between the notes consisting of whole tones and one—and—a—half tones. It can be played on the black notes of a piano, or on the white notes, omitting B and B.

According to the relative position of the tonic, there are five pentatonic modes, though some scholars prefer to regard them as segments of the same scale.

English songs also show a number of Hexatonic (six—notes) tunes, usually with the sixth missing.

Sharp held the theory that the present seven—note diatonic scale is a development from the pentatonic scale,




Ballads

"'Therefore,' while each ballad will he idiosyncratic, it will not be an expression of the personality of individuals, but of a collective sympathy: and the fundamental characteristic of popular ballads is therefore the absence of subjectivity and self—consciousness. Though they do not ~"write themselves" as Grimm has said - though a man and not a people has composed them, still the author counts for nothing, and it is not by mere accident, but with the best reason, that they have come down to us anonymously." Child.

Romantic Ballads        Child Waters, The Gypsy Laddie, The Maid Freed from the Gallows.

Tragic Ballads        The Two sisters, Lord Randal, Barbara Allan.

Historical Ballads        Sir Patric Spens, Mary Hamilton, Queen Jane, The Hunting of the Cheviot.

The Outlaw Ballads        Robin and the Three Squires, Johnnie Cock.

Supernatural Ballads        Lady Isobel and the Elf—Knight, The Unquiet Grave, The Demon Lover, The Wife of Usher's Well.

Humorous Ballads        Our Goodman, The Farmer's Curst Wife,





Conventional Elements

Conventional_diction        cerbain archaisms not found in common parlance — a song about lords and ladies will use "steed", "morrow," etc.

.Conventional Epithet        "milk—white steed," "Lily—white hand," "Fair Margaret."

Conventional Phrase        Tears "blind the eye," blood 'trickling down the knee."

Commonplace        e.g., the rose—briar stanza.

They buried her in the old churchyard (epithet)
They buried him in the choir
Out of her grave grew a red, red rose (epithet)
And out of his a green briar. -

Opening/Ending Formula         "As I walked out one Nay morning,"
        'It fell upon a..        
        "Come all you young fellows and listen to me.





"Voice and ear are left at a loss what to do with the ballad until supplied with the tune it was written to go with…. Unsung, it stays half—lacking.'

Robert Frost.

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 25 Nov 08 - 10:23 AM

Faye, for what it's worth I was treated like a pariah here for expressing things I thought self-evident. Some people will tell you it's fine to change things but not on their shift - they really mean folk is dead and they have the keys to the mausoleum.
There can be no more amusing definition of a genre than you don't know who wrote the music.

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: GUEST, Sminky
Date: 25 Nov 08 - 10:43 AM

Richard, the regular appearance of your seminar notes has itself become a tradition. Please just do me one small favour - correct the original to read "Mixolydian G to G" not "C to C". I'm sorry to be pedantic but it drives me bonkers. Thanks.

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 25 Nov 08 - 01:06 PM

Noted!

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 25 Nov 08 - 04:04 PM

RB thanks for posting the notes. Not all of us have been around long enough to have seen them in earlier threads. Content is interesting even if quite a bit goes right over my head. Food for thought.

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 25 Nov 08 - 06:02 PM

"There can be no more amusing definition of a genre than you don't know who wrote the music."

For the million, billion trillionth time a song can still be a folk song if it has a known author! It is the PROCESS that the song has been through which makes it a folk song! What's so difficult about that? Which part do you not understand?

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 25 Nov 08 - 06:11 PM

Don't worry Shimmers - they don't want to understand.

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: Snuffy
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 04:01 AM

And they won't be helped to understand if you keep telling them:

'Conclusions', by Cecil Sharp~
A folk song is always anonymous.

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: Faye Roche
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 04:08 AM

What is the process?

If it is just a matter of being absorbed into popular culture, a lot of pop songs must now be folk songs.

Not trying to provoke an argument here, just asking!

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 05:57 AM

I believe the folk process is basically over, because the oral tradition is basically dead - killed by the ubiquity of broadcast music and recorded music.

The problem is that the availability of broadcast music cuts away the ground from under the oral tradition. Do you sing while you work? Do your workmates? Do you sing at home to relax? When your friends or family want some music of an evening, do they suggest having a few songs? The oral tradition works in communities and societies where people can, by and large, answer Yes to all four. Those conditions may still obtain in some parts of the world, but they certainly don't in Britain (or the US).

This isn't something that's happened overnight. The uniformity imposed by mechanical reproduction has been eroding the oral tradition for a long time, going back to pianolas and mass-produced parlour songbooks. Ironically, the oral tradition finally gave up the ghost (in this country at least) at around the same time the Revival was really getting going.

Oral transmission among folkies does go on, but we aren't so much a community as a network of hobbyists.

Live music made by enthusiastic amateurs (and a few enthusiastic professionals) is great - it's one of the brighter spots in my life at the moment. Live traditional music, in particular. The songs that have survived from the oral tradition - or survived long enough to be collected - are, by and large, really good songs: in performance, they work in a way that most new songs don't. It's true that there are new songs coming through in the style of the old songs - Shantyman, Bring us a barrel and so on - but they're only ever likely to be heard by a tiny minority of the population.

Does pop music occupy the niche formerly occupied by folk music? No - nothing does. Live music made by ordinary people without making a big deal of it - because it's what you do, because it passes the time, because everyone's got a song in them - has basically died out. A bit of humility, and a bit of awareness of what's gone, are in order. We're not the folk, and any new music we make is never going to be folk music.

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 06:32 AM

A folk song is always anonymous.

I love that one. Does it mean I can sing anything as a folk song as long as I have a bag over my head or that I can sing whatever I like as long as I don't know who wrote it?:-D

Cheers

DeG

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 06:46 AM

Oh FFS!

The CONCLUSION (not test) arose from the then operation of the folk process. As a result of transmission through the folk process the song became anonymous. That's a result, not a condition.

Same thing goes for the prevalance of certain modes, if you think modes betoken anything, which I don't.

The folk process now operates by a song going into the folk circuit (or community), people learn it orally in that process (I certainly sometimes do - and it's how common mondegreens result) and it gets stylistically and verbally and melodically (I have a tendency to re-majorise tunes as I memorise them, for example) modified. What does not so frequently happen is the authorship becoming lost.

It's what the 1954 definition allows for as the adoption of composed song with modification.

The process of modification means that the "sound" is not a necessary or sufficient test of whether a song is a folk song, and that is why I explained above that Myssha was confused in the test she was applying. It also happens to be why most "folk metal" I have found is not folk.

DeG - don't give up your day job.

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 07:36 AM

I totally agree with Pip Radish's 'network of hobbyists' but that runs counter to the perception within contemporary folk 'revival' (sic) that the music is a) under attack, b) will whither and die if people don't defend 'it'.

By and large I prefer the sound of traditional music to singer-songwriting in a folk mode but that's all it is - a preference. The only qualifying differences are academic and as the academy had no part in the progenesis or dissemination of the form we're back to the elevation of nit-picking or, if you prefer, mutually agreed exclusion by committee: Pip's old music hobby. Fascinating in its own way no doubt but nothing to do with the practice of music, folk or otherwise.

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 07:53 AM

But in consequence the derivation but not the form is everything to do with whether it is folk or otherwise. The point surely is that once that is understood the question (the OP's question) of whether the form is traditional is left exposed as purely a matter of taste and preference.

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 08:42 AM

A club should have the right to describe itself and book performers in any way it chooses so long as it recognises the subjectivity of that process. If it assumes a mantle of authenticity by that choice it's claiming one modern sensibility rehashing old material is more folkish than another and that's plain bunkum. A performer could write a ballad in a traditional mode, invent a provenance and the vast majority of the audience wouldn't know it wasn't original.

We're left with facets of the music that are beyond the aural reception of it - contexts which are not appreciated in a club environment. Folk in that sense is best appreciated within academia, not performing environments.

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 09:17 AM

A performer could write a ballad in a traditional mode, invent a provenance and the vast majority of the audience wouldn't know it wasn't original.

I'm sure that's true, but it's got nothing to do with whether there is a difference between songs that are traditional and songs that aren't. I used to think a friend of mine did a lot more Hank Williams songs than he does - he'd been writing his own without telling me (or the audience). I'm sure the vast majority of the audience didn't know his songs weren't Hank's - and if he'd lied to them about it they wouldn't have been any the wiser. They still weren't written by Hank Williams.

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: GUEST, Sminky
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 09:28 AM

They still weren't written by Hank Williams.

And the tragic consequence of this was..........?

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: Sleepy Rosie
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 09:41 AM

A second thanks to Richard Bridge echoing Virginia Tam. Your notes are now cut and pasted to my wordprocessor!

By the way folks, this thread is finally becoming a properly interesting one!

It's helpful for someone like me, who knows so little about any of it, to read the points being discussed here, now that the debate's focused on the OP's initial interesting question :-)

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 10:03 AM

Sminky - there were no consequences at all, since I was talking hypothetically.

Glueman said that "claiming one modern sensibility rehashing old material is more folkish than another" is "bunkum", on the basis that it's possible to pass off new material as trad. But what you can pass off as trad is irrelevant. It's possible to pass off new material as Hank Williams - that doesn't mean that it's "bunkum" to claim that some songs are by Hank Williams and some aren't.

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 10:32 AM

The point is most people consume, process, discover (call it what you will) music through their ears, not an academic discourse. There's nothing wrong with critical theoretical dialogues going on around music, it's just not the way the stuff is heard and especially not in folk clubs.
On that basis a pastiche of Hank Williams tune or a drinking song or sea shanty are differentiated only in the expectations that surround them, not through any intrinsic value in the received text. Most bookers are bluffing, they go on what the thing sounds like whatever else they might claim.

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 10:52 AM

Surely a lot of bookers DON'T go on what the act sounds like but on their reputation.

We had a posting here a while back from one of the Edinburgh Folk Club organizers asking what Jeff Warner was like - after they'd booked him. (Good decision, as it turned out). I presume they were contacted by an agent, found out that Warner was playing at a number of other venues who knew what they were doing, and just took a punt on him.

It would probably have been easier to find out what Warner's approach to his material was (hard-core traditionalist with first-rate scholarship) than what it actually sounded like (quiet deadpan humour and terrifically effective playing on many different instruments).

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 11:47 AM

There's nothing wrong with critical theoretical dialogues going on around music, it's just not the way the stuff is heard and especially not in folk clubs.

I've completely lost sight of what you're arguing now.

I don't think anyone's saying that everything's traditional, or that nothing's traditional, or that it's usually impossible to say whether a song is traditional or not. You may or may not know whether a song's traditional the first time you hear it, but you can usually find out one way or the other.

(At this point somebody usually says ah but what about... (what about Dirty Old Town, what about Sally Free and Easy, what about Where Have All the Flowers Gone?...). But that's not really saying that we don't know the definition of 'traditional' - it's saying that the definition we've got ought to be changed.)

We know which songs Hank Williams wrote, and by extension which ones he didn't (all the rest). We know which songs are traditional, and we know which ones aren't. What's 'theoretical' about a club saying "This is a place for traditional songs" - or me saying "I wish my local club was a place for traditional songs"?

As for what folk music is, surely every attempt to define it is just as 'theoretical' as any other - people who say "folk equals traditional" have got one agenda, people who say it doesn't have got another, and both those positions are valid. (One of them's wrong, obviously, but they're both valid.)

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 11:53 AM

Most bookers are bluffing, they go on what the thing sounds like whatever else they might claim.

Bit difficult to argue with you on that one...

A Booker writes: "He's right you know. Got us bang to rights."
[Glueman thinks: Ha! He admits it!]

Another Booker writes: "Not at all! We go on our in-depth knowledge of the genre in all its complete and manifold entiretyty."
[Glueman thinks: Ha! Bluffer!]

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 11:58 AM

Are you sure Glueman thinks, or is he just spreading confusion (or manure) to help the horse definition grow?

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: Gedi
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 12:00 PM

"A performer could write a ballad in a traditional mode, invent a provenance and the vast majority of the audience wouldn't know it wasn't original."

That brings to mind the stories (which I believe to be true) about Ewan McColls songs written for the Radio Ballads in the 60's. Apparently several of the songs (eg Shoals of Herring) were claimed by some old folk to have always been in their repertoire, having learned them at an early age. Yet they had only recently been written. The songs must really have struck a chord with these people. Not quite sure what McColl thought but I think he was quietly pleased about it.

Ged

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: Gervase
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 12:05 PM

I believe the folk process is basically over, because the oral tradition is basically dead - killed by the ubiquity of broadcast music and recorded music.
Within the wider community perhaps - as you say, Pip, 'folk' is now largely the preserve of hobbyists rather than an integral part of our culture. But within that group of hobbyists the oral tradition is alive and well - hence the looks of surprise when some people learn that songs like 'Bring us a Barrel', 'Fields of Athenry' or 'Only Her Rivers Run Free' were written by real people within the past few decades. Some songsmiths - Keith Marsden and Dave Webber spring to mind - must sometimes have smiled rather ruefully at the way so much of their material has been absorbed so quickly into the 'anon.trad.' sphere through oral transmission.
Somehow, though, I can't see Seth Lakeman's 'The White Hare' being adopted, whatever the Radio 2 judges said!
Sorry, I'll get me coat...

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 12:45 PM

So someone with an actual name who exists within living memory is responsible for the sentimentalised excrescence that is 'The Fields of Athenry'? Jeez...

Nothing to do with definitions of folk (which is largely a game for academics and pseudo-academics and "says nothing to me about my life", to quote a quotable non-folksinger) but is not the test of any song first and foremost whether it moves you, touches you, sends you, with the tedious and thankless task of classification, dessication and pinning onto a board under glass an altogether secondary pleasure? Once taken out of the halls of academia, it not a form of intellectual frottage for the sole satisfaction of those who are not content with pleasuring themselves only with the beauty of the sound in the moment? On some level I'm probably glad that the folk world is awash with self-appointed sorters-outers of the wheat from the chaff (once they've reached agreement on the definitions of what is wheat and what indeed is chaff) but isn't it the musical equivalent of smeary, oversized, sellotaped-up, eighties-style, pale brown tortoiseshell horn-rimmed glasses? The sort that keep slipping endlessly down the wearer's nose? Until a groove is worn?

I suppose defining increasingly makes me lose the will to live. It doesn't increase my listening pleasure or help me decide what I should listen to.

Finally, good to hear from you Glueman. Your pithy and usually spot-on interjections have been missed. Funny how when you like traditional music but you don't subscribe to the theoretical orthodoxy you're suddenly a 'horse whisperer' or whatever the put-down of the moment is...

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 01:21 PM

I believe the folk process is basically over, because the oral tradition is basically dead....

Oral tradtion need not be dead. Take knowledge and experience down in print, audio and video files and send them to your local record office. How many songs, poems and local stories (folk knowledge) learned at a grandparent's knee will be lost if we don't do it now?


see this tread

I think I am on a mission now.

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 02:17 PM

is not the test of any song first and foremost whether it moves you, touches you, sends you, with the tedious and thankless task of classification, dessication and pinning onto a board under glass an altogether secondary pleasure?

If you don't want to classify music, don't do it. Beats the hell out of me why anyone should care about definitions they don't care about, if you see what I mean.

Besides, the reason why I do care about definitions is precisely about the pleasure of the music. Traditional music, well performed, blows me away - not invariably, obviously, but much, much more consistently than what I hear from singer-songwriters, even the ones with nice hair. As far as I'm concerned, traditional music is to most 'folk' as the Brandenburg Concertos are to most classical music, or See My Baby Jive is to most pop - it's The Good Stuff. The difference is, there are six Brandenburgs and there's only one See My Baby Jive, but there's more traditional music than I could listen to in the rest of my life. There's a huge stock of this particular Good Stuff, and there's only one set of places where you can get it - events, clubs and venues labelled 'folk'. So it matters enormously whether folk clubs are putting on traditional music or not, precisely because it makes the difference between a pleasant way to pass an evening when there's nothing on telly and an evening that I'll remember for months afterwards.

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 02:51 PM

You see, I think there are some excellent traditional songs, some dreadful ones, some quite good ones, some mediocre ones and so on. I just can't get excited about genres as a whole. When I say I like traditional music what I mean is I like more of it than I do of most types of music. And, with respect, there's far far more to music than trad vs singer songwriter and most of my tastes lie outside either camp. Whilst most nights when I listen to traditional music I find plenty to love, I don't find it difficult to imagine a night of turgid songs sung badly. There's plenty of them out there.

On some levels, I do care about definitions but find the realisation that I do strangely depressing.

Never cared too much for Wizard, by the way. More of a Sparks man, meself.

Traditional music, well performed, blows me away

Well, me too. As does Indian classical music, prog rock, post bop, psych rock and lots of other things. Even the odd singer songwriter... (preferably very odd - the sainted Michael Hurley springs to mind).

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: Sleepy Rosie
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 02:53 PM

Holy cow mothers, if 'traditional is to folk', what 'See My Baby Jive is to pop' (i.e. 'the good stuff'), seems like it's not only 'the folk process' that's dead, buried and reduced to irrevocable dust.
RIP music... ;-)

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 03:07 PM

Someone buy that woman a pint for reading my mind! And me a Brummie by birth too (and Roy Wood briefly living on my old street, too)...

Pip - here's a thought: if you're really bad you'll do I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day at the Beech Sinaround next week...

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 03:19 PM

Very kind Spleen Cringe, I'll endeavour to put two penn'orth in more often. What pulls my string most is the rarely stated but dearly held assumption that traditional is somehow 'more' in a way that hints at connoisseurship. It's adherents go to great efforts to say how damned cool they are with stuff in the style of, while not wanting anything to do with current acoustic singer songwriting in a folk stylee themselves. It's their prerogative of course, it just doesn't get them a medal.

Dig a little deeper and you'll mine a seam of prejudice about instrumentation and appearance, approach and sound until you're left with folk being pretty much what they want it to be. It's a self fulfilling thing with very arbitrary boundaries. Because I like traditional doesn't stop me picking at its stitches or trusting my ears instead of notional transmission provenance.

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 03:37 PM

there's far far more to music than trad vs singer songwriter

Of course, but neither Faust nor National Health have dropped in on Chorlton lately (and if they did it wouldn't be a quid on the door).

When I say I like traditional music what I mean is I like more of it than I do of most types of music.

Since that's exactly what I said about my own tastes, I'm not sure how to argue with that.

But you're wrong about Wizzard. See My Baby Jive, in particular, demonstrably and objectively is the, oh, second or maybe at a pinch third greatest single ever made.

Glueman: since I write songs myself and even occasionally sing them in front of other people, I'll consider myself excluded from whatever group of people it is that's annoyed you so much. Good - they sound horrible.

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 04:29 PM

Wizzard were always horrid!

But there is a value to knowledge. When a gene pool is lost a risk arises. Traditions do indeed have a values as such. They may no longer be applicable, but they should not be forgotten.

The position is somewhat different in the USA. The currently dominant cultures there arose out of a much more recent melting pot than most European cultures, most Indian cultures, most African cultures, most Far Eastern cultures, or most Arabic cultures.

None of which restricts how traditional material SHOULD be performed, but does underly where it comes from. Nor does it I think bar accretion to "folk" material although those accretions may be more modern than traditional.

It MAY influence who best performs a given set of material. The blues (which as a young student, I adored) has been experienced in its state of origin within a couple of generations of most African-Americans. That is not so of most white Americans or Europeans. If we import ourselves into that milieu we are cuckoos or colonists (a case to be made for saying cuckoos since there are so few modern African-American blues players, Guy Davis apart).

If Davy Graham can say, as he did, that he (a man of consummate skill) could study the oud for 10 years and still not grasp the antiphonal nature of the treble/bass question and answer, how close to we lesser mortals have to get to someone else's tradition to become competent in it?

The "own tradition" was one of the better ideas of the critics group.

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 04:57 PM

As a modern white British sensibility I don't feel proprietorial towards folk any more than blues or rock or soul, it's equally exotic and distant. That's what makes me appreciate it, not it's immediacy or familiarity. All great music has a direct line to the numinous but the pecking order folk assumes for itself is misplaced.

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: Gurney
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 02:26 AM

I've been thinking about Cecil Sharp's statement, that a folk song is always anonymous. Probably, in his time, and considering what he was collecting, that would be true. He was collecting from non-professionals, i.e. folk singers!
If his research turned up an author, then he could reclassify it, according to his lights.
And back we go to the unanswerable 'What is a f.....

Aaaagh.

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 05:28 AM

"I've been thinking about Cecil Sharp's statement, that a folk song is always anonymous."

In some respects Sharp was a scientist who had a scientific view of his collecting activities. What fascinates me is that he attempted to apply Darwinian evolutionary theory to the study of folk song. But no scientific theory is ever the last word; there are always exceptions and if enough of these build up then the theory has to be modified.

The people who built the 1954 definition realised that the bit about anonymity of composition didn't fit so discarded it - there's no shame in that! The theories of people like Newton, Darwin and Einstien have been modified by those scientists who came after - it's in the nature of scientific theories.

PS: "I like folk music and I like rock music, therefore rock music is a form of folk music" doesn't qualify as a scientific theory!

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: greg stephens
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 05:39 AM

Peoiple often speak in a non-rigorous shorthand: eg "Dutch people are taller than Welsh people" (obviously, you need to add "on average").Sharp's statement on the anonymity of folksong should be viewed in that light. A more appropriate version would be "Folk songs are considered anonymous and common property, by the folk who made and sing them". The point is, people singing the Farmer's Boy have not in general been thinking "This was written by X" Clearly, the status of the Farmer's Boy as a folk song does not really change if diligent academic research turns up a putative composer(though the research may not give an accurate result, anyway). It is just a question of attitude. "Searching for Lambs" is a folksong. "Yesterday" is a Beatles song.Simple.

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 06:06 AM

Sharp's "conclusion" is not part of the 1954 definition, even though Karpeles was in a sense one of his apostles.

The 1954 definition does NOT say that in order to be a folk song, a song has to be of no known authorship.

Check this above if you wish.

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: GUEST, Sminky
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 06:51 AM

What type of song was "Searching for Lambs" before it became a folksong?

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: GUEST,Working Radish
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 08:22 AM

Before it became a folk song, it was classified (sorry, Spleen) according to whatever set of categories people were using at the time. It almost certainly wasn't 'folk', for the same reason that it almost certainly wasn't 'pop', 'R&B', 'drum and bass' or 'grindcore'. You could say that a folk song is a song that's survived from a period when it wasn't called folk.

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: greg stephens
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 08:25 AM

Sminky: no idea, I wasn't there. Probably some kind of composed pop song, I suppose you might consider it? Anyway, in the fullness of time, as many songs do, it evolved by usage into a folksong.(Obviously, I am using the term folksong in my own way, as we all do. Some other people mean completely different things by the term, and believe a song can be a folksong the second it is composed).

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: GUEST, Sminky
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 08:44 AM

Now I'm getting confused. According to Mr Radish it wasn't a pop song; according to Mr Stephens it was (I thought this was supposed to be simple).

I think we're all agreed that no song can become an 'instant' folksong. So - assuming it goes undergoes the appropriate 'process', what is to prevent "Yesterday" by the Beatles from becoming a folksong?

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: greg stephens
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 09:05 AM

In point of fact, Mr Sminky, I said I had no idea what it was.But you could call it a pop song if you like. Quite irrelevant to anything now, what I call it, or what you call it, or what Radish, or any other vegetable call it. What's in a name? None of us have the slightest idea what various people might have classified the original song as, and while we may guess to our hearts' content, it deosn't really affect the price of swedes. How you pronounce the word potato does not affect the taste of the vegetable.

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 09:33 AM

"None of us have the slightest idea what various people might have classified the original song as..."

Greg, I think you've hit the nail on the head with this. I reckon if they'd classified it as anything it would have been a "song" (as opposed to a potato or a truncheon, for example). I'd have thought the very notion of "folk song", is really an artificial construct that can only be applied to songs selectively and retrospectively by an almost mystical process (double reverse osmosis is my best guess) by those with an academic or cultural detatchment from the songs themselves. What gets in and what doesn't is based almost entirely on chance and circumstance (if Cecil Sharp hadn't heard his posh mate's gardener, we wouldn't necessarily have 'Seeds of Love' as one of our folk songs - oversimplification, but d'you get my drift?). When not chance and circumstance there's also a healthy dollop of the collector's prejudices, expectations and own tastes and preferences. The exception to this are people who are traditional singers (i.e. have learned songs aurally from family or community or work-grouping) who have, because of the nature of folk music in the post-folk era, been absorbed into the revival (which is arguably just about all we have left - the inevitable reduction of "folk" to a genre and the consequent impossible onslaught of anally retentive genre politics that goes with this).

Meanwhile, the magicians and alchemists of the 1954 conclave may have been a few things, but I doubt they were scientists.

Those who disagree with me are more than welcome to classify this post as a work of fiction. They may be right. I prefer to inhabit the grey areas...

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: GUEST,Working Radish
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 11:29 AM

assuming it goes undergoes the appropriate 'process', what is to prevent "Yesterday" by the Beatles from becoming a folksong?

Absolutely nothing. If all the radios, TVs, turntables, CD players and iPods in the world stopped working tomorrow, 40 years from now we'd have a fine crop of new folk songs, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if Yesterday was one of them. But that's the only way it - or any other song - is going to undergo the appropriate process now.

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: Sleepy Rosie
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 11:53 AM

I'd like to ask, what posters think of Virginia Tams suggestion that we may still need to be gathering 'traditional' songs from those who know them.

Supposing I met some elderly lady who sang me a couple of songs she's known from childhood, which had not already been collected to anyone elses's knowledge. And suppose she could tell me the name of the Great Uncle who sang them to her, and who she believes composed them.

Would they not count as 'folk songs' because the cut-off date for that term's applicability has been established at year X?

So does the folk process necessarily have to be dead, or has it been laid to rest prematurely and is there a case for the folk community keeping it alive?

I'm just following on from some of the thoughts that VTam has made on the 'records archive' thread, and thought here was the place to ask.

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 12:03 PM

"Ow 'do, Jethro!"

"Ow 'do Garge!"

Oi loiked that song you sung at the 'Arvest 'Ome larst noight; 'ju roihgt it?

"Yes oi did, Jethro, but keep yer voice down!"

"Whoi?"

"'Corse I dun't want nobody to know that oi wrote it - oi wants it to be herrnonymus loike."

"Whoi'je yer want it to be herrnonymous?"

"So people in the future 'ull classifoi it as a folk song."

"Roight! Got yer! Mum's the word. Oi dun't know nuthing."

Subject: RE: How traditional should it be?
From: GUEST, Sminky
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 12:03 PM

Barring some global catastrophe that destroys every type of recording/playback device (and leaving only myself and handful of other survivors), that is the end of the folk process as we know it. (Rosie - Latin, Manx and Cornish are dead languages - even though some people still speak them).

This leaves us with a stark choice:

1) We compose some kind of statement for future generations explaining why, after centuries of glorious outpouring, no folk songs were created in the 21st century, or

2) We rethink what relevance the 'folk process' has today.