What makes it a Folk Song?

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 12 May 09 - 07:23 AM

You're tangling people again Jim. Those of us with doubts about the folk process (sic) as laid down by the 54 definition aren't some hydra-headed enemy waiting to spoil the party. I think it's wooley, relies upon wishful thinking and attracts sentimental adherents who lose all sight of what they're on about. Slim facts mixed with value judgements.

I never said 'run along'. I try to avoid Pip Radish style snippiness at all times while still making the point.

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 May 09 - 07:13 AM

"It's as useful a method as hurling insults then playing hurt."
Not convinced that I ever did the first, certainly not the second.
However - have resolved to be more careful in future in order not to upset people - perhaps you'd like to join me?
On the other hand:
"End of discussion. Now run along and play some music."
Hav never attempted to issue direct orders - wouldn't dare for fear of being branded a member of the FP
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 12 May 09 - 07:05 AM

> You couldn't make it up, but someone did. <

You.

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 12 May 09 - 06:56 AM

"What's diegesis - dictionaries didn't help?"

The word roughly means 'story world', one created by the teller. A fiction so apparently complete it draws the listener in so he believes the tale. The beguiling story here is mysterious, unknowable individuals created a music that was adopted seamlessly by society until an apocalypse (industrial, communications or in some other way post-Edenic) atomised a nation until rescued by seers. Research with a dusting of the numinous if you like. Tweedy shamen capturing the dying flames of a disappearing world backed up by a committee who bought the idea.

You couldn't make it up, but someone did.

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: GUEST,Working Radish
Date: 12 May 09 - 06:46 AM

What shouldn't be underestimated is the sheer pleasure it gives some of us baiting 1954 protagonists.

What unpleasant people some of us must be, or play at being when they're on the Internet.

I've repeatedly pointed out the logical holes in 1954

Good for you - I wish I'd been there. Perhaps you could try doing it on Mudcat.

You can't have it both ways - you can ask questions and take note of the answers, or you can wind people up and run away. Up to you really.

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 12 May 09 - 06:44 AM

I again said that, CB, "with the understanding that English folk-music, for centuries, has entertained people, with telling and/or dancing, via, mostly, the repetition of tunes: more-sophisticated polyphony and chords being found, rather, in church and court - eventually, i.e." (here).

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 12 May 09 - 06:34 AM

WAV,
style does play some part,which is why thislose the essence
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gHTw9XjKMc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gHTw9XjKMchttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gHTw9XjKMc
but it is not just the inapproprate harmonies,but the style of the singing.
however you are wrong,in condemning all harmony.
drones and harmony have been used for centuries in folk music.

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 May 09 - 06:32 AM

What's diegesis - dictionaries didn't help?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 12 May 09 - 06:28 AM

I ask again, who decides? Victorian neo-medievalists? Edwardian sentimentalists? post-war ruralists? alienated Beatniks? All folkish accretions rely on the dubious provenance of 'the people' which is itself an arbitrary romantic construct. If a Show of Hands tune (God help us all) were accomodated into the folk garden at what point would it be attested? Would the people who currently believe it is be proved correct and vindicated, or were they wrong until a committee decides?

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 12 May 09 - 06:14 AM

As I've said on other threads, and here, it's largely a focus on the TUNE - rather than the sophisticated harmonising etc. that characterise the classical music scene.

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 12 May 09 - 06:09 AM

A diegesis does not require a filter, and to assert that the narrative or continuity with history postulated by the Karpeles 1954 definition is necessarily sealed, retrospective and finite is only true if you accept the Sharp conclusion (which I do not) that a folk song must be anonymous. Otherwise, it follows from the Karpeles definition that the body of "folk" may continue to benefit from accretion.

It also follows from the Karpeles definition that the composed "folk-style" tunes (and equivalent songs) mentioned by michaelR may accrete to the body of "folk" when they have been adopted and modified in transition, as say "Ride on" has been.

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: greg stephens
Date: 12 May 09 - 05:30 AM

"a finite, retrospective and sealed diegesis with them as the filter. Of course it's nonsense."
Couldn't have put it better myself.

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 12 May 09 - 04:54 AM

I would say it is much easier to write a convincing sounding folk tune than a song.
if we analyse both songs and tunes in the irish scots english welsh tradition,the melodies of both use four modes,major mixolydian dorian aeolian.
the tunes are often 32 bar double jigs slip jigs reels hornpipes.
writing convincing words that have the true feel of a traditional song[imo]is much more difficult.

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 12 May 09 - 04:12 AM

"suppose we've got to win our arguments somehow!"

It's as useful a method as hurling insults then playing hurt.

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 12 May 09 - 04:08 AM

Folk music attracted collectors and historians who wanted to fix the music in their own 'image': a finite, retrospective and sealed diegesis with them as the filter. Of course it's nonsense.

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 May 09 - 04:08 AM

I never cease to wonder why people resort to archaic terms like 'Noble Savage' and 'The Great Unwashed' - suppose we've got to win our arguments somehow!
"End of discussion. Now run along and play some music."
Now why didn't you say this in the first place - would have saved us all the trouble of thinking for ourselves.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: michaelr
Date: 11 May 09 - 06:35 PM

The silliness of the whole argument becomes clear when one substitutes "tune" for "song".

Plenty of people are composing new jigs, reels, hornpipes etc. all the time. Are these compositions not "folk"? To which the answer can only be:

"Of course they are; don't be daft."

Music is folk music if it sounds like folk music; i. e. if it uses the familiar language: the folk idiom, as it were.

End of discussion. Now run along and play some music.

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 11 May 09 - 03:10 PM

"That, of course, is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a definition."

Because it's people based rather than an abstract construct by a bourgeois Victorian musicologists examining an artifact of the great unwashed?

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 May 09 - 03:09 PM

Ian:
"Or put it another way, go to a folk club and enjoy the experience for the spontaneous sport it is."
Perhaps you can explain something that others have been unable to.
Why is it not possible to do both - does understanding and taking a music seriously automatically prohibit somebody from actually enjoying it?
I have been involved in folk music for nearly fifty years, mainly as a listener and singer, but over the last thirty odd of those as a collector and researcher.
I write on the subject, talk on it, read about it, argue about it, issue CDs of our field recordings, archive it and am now preparing to publish a couple of books on Traveller songs and stories.
After all this time, Sheila Stewart singing 'Tifties Annie' still brings a lump to the throat and I can still fall out of my chair listening to Sam Larner sing 'Butter And Cheese And All'.
Do you think it's a genetic flaw - or what?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: Musket
Date: 11 May 09 - 02:13 PM

Well, Richard Bridge, or just Bridge to return the compliment, is upset by me agreeing with part of what he said.

Gainsaying has me reaching for the dictionary these days, as it is used for more than the original definition...

Talking about definitions... My dear Bridge, there is no definition of folk, so you do not have to get all upset.

There is a definition from 1954, (I reckon I just put 1959 on another thread, but never mind, it is all irrelevant anyway,) and there are other definitions, but they are all either personal or self serving.

As Richard Dawkin recently almost said, "There probably is no Folk. (So get on and enjoy your life.")

Or put it another way, go to a folk club and enjoy the experience for the spontaneous sport it is.

Sir Thomas Beecham, the conductor, said it all. "The English don't understand music, but they love the sound it makes." That'll be me then.

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 11 May 09 - 01:47 PM

Having read some other posts I am very upset that Mather can purport to agree with anything I say and then go on to gainsay the core of it.

And the other thing is that those who purport to pick nits out of the 1954 definition are then the very people wo fail to attempt or seeek to improve it, but put forward idiocies like the horse definition.

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 11 May 09 - 12:53 PM

"So in answer, a folk song is anything an informed person says it is."

That, of course, is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a definition. It is pure wish fulfilment and an infinitely wide net to catch any music you like so that you can attach the label 'folk music' to it. An infinitely wide net with an infinitely wide 'logical hole' in it - perhaps you shouldn't be preaching to other people about 'logical holes', glueman!

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 11 May 09 - 12:15 PM

What shouldn't be underestimated is the sheer pleasure it gives some of us baiting 1954 protagonists. Is this pleasure hatred of our fellow man? Of course not, is the sheer pomposity of people who use the definition as a stick to beat singers they don't approve of while huddling close to the words to validate what they do. Whatever that might be.

The same people will be heard dismissing 'academic' readings of the definition in a 'we've got no time for that fancy white collar smartarse stuff' way, while simultaneously swatting away genuine enquiry like a Dickensian despot with an ignorant servant.
I've repeatedly pointed out the logical holes in 1954 but fans of the thing have a blind spot and it heals by the next thread. It's useless as more than the vaguest attempt to identify a tradition and seems to attracts bullies in its wake. If it were qualified by 'revival' in twenty foot high neon letters it may act as a signpost but does none of the things it says on the tin.
So in answer, a folk song is anything an informed person says it is.

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: Musket
Date: 11 May 09 - 11:48 AM

I do tend to agree with a lot that Richard Bridge has just said, above. I would add though that a style may invoke nostalgia and you may like a song because it echoes familiar themes, causing you to decide in your own mind it is ergo a folk song.

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: Bryn Pugh
Date: 11 May 09 - 10:59 AM

I shall do that next time you're over, Dick. Any chance you might PM me with the tour places and dates ?

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 08 May 09 - 02:25 PM

Oh shit I knew I should not have read this thread.

"Folk" does not mean "good" or "bad".

It doesn't mean you have to do it, or not do it.

It is nothing to do with whether you like it or not.

It's not about a particular sound.

It is to do with cultural absorption transmission and evolution OF THE SONG OR MUSIC.

Jim I may disagree with you about whether we are allowed to sing folk song or only to listen to it, but I admire your patience on this thread.

Gone again before I give myself a heart attack!

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 08 May 09 - 01:17 PM

BrynPugh,you should go to one of my gigs,I sing 98 per cent traditional material,Dick Miles

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego
Date: 08 May 09 - 01:10 PM

I've heard "folk-like," "folk-derived," "faux folk" and several other unfortunate labels which attempt to separate composed or popular music from traditional music as defined by the innumerably mentioned "1954 definition." I'm content to go with the old sixties mantra, "different strokes for different folks," and let it go at that.

Looking at the argument from an economic point of view, what is the "utility" of resolving this issue? Artistic arguments almost never end anyway.

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: Bryn Pugh
Date: 08 May 09 - 11:14 AM

Having thought carefully, recently,

(I said that one reason why my Beloved and I don't go to folk clubs any more is that good manners . . .has gone to fuck . . . )

I decided to give a local folk club another try. I'm not for saying where.

There was a singer, an extremely accomplished instrumentalist, who sang self-composed material. I did not hear a single tradsitional song.

Out of courtesy I waited for the break, and went home, sadder but (I hope) wiser.

If that's folk song - and I went to my first folk club in the Old Moat Conservative Club in 1964 - it isn't what I call folk song, and you can keep it for me. It was bad enough, as far as I am concerned,

in the late 60s to early 70s, when the three chord wonders in the denim caps started infesting the clubs.

I wonder what the "all song is folk song" merchants who saw Harry H. Corbett as 'Steptoe' would make of him as a shantey man ?

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: Mr Happy
Date: 08 May 09 - 09:36 AM

.......so you're a 'traditional researcher' ?

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 31 Mar 09 - 10:05 AM

Well, SS, Ive been doing 'research' for longer than you (42 years, to be exact) and I've come to a different conclusion - funny that! Oh yes, and I bet you haven't published your 'research' in a peer reviewed journal, either!

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 30 Mar 09 - 10:45 AM

I must support Shimrod on his last sceptical post re Sinister Supporter's bizarre remarks.
"with Folk song which research has shown can include any song of any genre sung in a designated folk context by designated folk singers" (Sinister Supporter, March 2410.58AM
"Resaerch has shown"? Researched by whom?"Designated folk context" ? Designated by whom? Possibly the elusive "distinguished international experts" who regularly appear in the popular press or news broadcats. Or perhaps it means "I read it in Wikipedia".

I'm counting 35 years of frequenting folk festivals, folk radio, folk clubs, folk singarounds, folk record shops, folk websites, folk fora, and other Designated Folk Contexts* as research, by way of observing the empirical evidence from which I conclude that Folk song can include any song of any genre sung in a designated folk context by designated folk singers. Now, which bit of that statement do you find difficult to understand, or disagree with? Or for that matter find bizarre?

* Desinated by whom? The folk singers, festival organisers, folk club residents, organisers, punters, floor singers etc. - in short - the Folk, without whom there would be no Folk Music.

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 30 Mar 09 - 08:44 AM

How many times will we try to define
the music we all love to sing?
How many threads will it take to describe
how long is this one piece of string?
And how many words will it take to agree
and for argument to lose its sting?
The answer, my friend... etc

Greg, you say "...if someone wants to include modern written songs in the category of folksongs, then they are duty bound to think up a good word to describe the things that used to be called folk songs". But by the same token, anyone who wants to hijack the word "folk" for the specific category of traditional songs, is also duty bound to think up a good word to describe the things that used to be called folk but are not traditional.

I know it's a circular argument, and therefore absurd. But for me the origins of this controversy are in the very fact that a group of people, no matter how learned and trustworthy, decided to pin a word of the English language down to a specific meaning, flying in the face of common usage (which is the proper way for language to evolve). Ever since then, the two worlds - common usage and rigid definition - have been drifting apart, and will continue to do so until one or the other becomes irrelevant. No guesses for which I think it is likely to be.

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: greg stephens
Date: 30 Mar 09 - 07:59 AM

I must support Shimrod on his last sceptical post re Sinister Supporter's bizarre remarks.
"with Folk song which research has shown can include any song of any genre sung in a designated folk context by designated folk singers" (Sinister Supporter, March 2410.58AM
"Resaerch has shown"? Researched by whom?"Designated folk context" ? Designated by whom? Possibly the elusive "distinguished international experts" who regularly appear in the popular press or news broadcats. Or perhaps it means "I read it in Wikipedia".

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: Mr Happy
Date: 30 Mar 09 - 07:43 AM

Some 'ordinary working folk' on the TV prog 'Trawlermen' were heard singing the traditional fishing shanty, 'Take me home, country roads'??

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: Musket
Date: 30 Mar 09 - 05:33 AM

Folk also refers to rich businessmen, members of the House of Lords and frankly anybody.

Rock stars singing about the ills of stuffing powder up your nose has every resonance with somebody singing about it being cold hard work on a trawler boat.

I could be mischievous and say that if you are happy, you don't whinge. So, a lot of what are called folk songs are a way of expressing unhappiness with your lot. The music of envy?

it really makes me smile to read the above post claiming you have to fit some social stereotype (common ordinary working people) to have some relationship with "folk."

i used to work down the pit and enjoyed a lot of what I call folk music. I am now comfortably well off, apparantly in a socio economic group my parents would never have believed possible, and still enjoy the same music.

So, that buggers up that theory!

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 07:11 AM

'Folk' refers to the 'common', ordinary, working people -however you want to phrase it - tras=dition to the process that forms the song.
As I sauid elsewhere, joined at the hip.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 05:42 AM

"Then that word would be Traditional song, which the evidence would suggest is in no way synonymous with Folk song which research has shown can include any song of any genre sung in a designated folk context by designated folk singers, including, of course, Traditional song."

Whose research? Please cite references!

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 24 Mar 09 - 03:02 PM

Isn't there something in 1984 about bogus Folk Songs written by the government? I've never read it, but have a vague recollection of the Peter Cushing film...

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: Mr Happy
Date: 24 Mar 09 - 11:01 AM

I said '1954' not '1984' - so Big Brother hopefully isn't watching!

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 24 Mar 09 - 10:58 AM

What I alway say is(along with Bert Lloyd) is that if someone wants to include modern written songs in the category of folksongs, then they are duty bound to think up a good word to describe the things that used to be called folk songs.

Then that word would be Traditional song, which the evidence would suggest is in no way synonymous with Folk song which research has shown can include any song of any genre sung in a designated folk context by designated folk singers, including, of course, Traditional song. Furthermore, any Traditional song can be sung in any other musical context - rock, classical, jazz, experimental, pop &c. - without any loss to its essential integrity. Again, this isn't idle theorising rather an observance of the available evidence.

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: GUEST, Sminky
Date: 24 Mar 09 - 09:46 AM

All folk songs were "modern written songs" at one time or another.

I wonder how many would have survived if certain people on this forum had been around then.

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: Gedi
Date: 24 Mar 09 - 09:25 AM

"I wonder, did the people of olden, if traditional, times know that the songs they enjoyed were "folk" songs or that they were traditional?"

I'm sure they didn't think in those terms, but then, they didn't have all manner of recorded songs/music coming at them day in day out from various sources to influence their own traditions, so they didn't have to 'protect' it as such.

It's only in relatively recent times that we have been able to hear music from all over the country, and indeed the world. In days gone by the only songs most people would ever hear would be those sung by themselves and their mates down the local pub. They did not need to worry about old traditions dying out because then the tradition was very much alive.

Nowadays if it wasn't for a small handful of folk then many of these old songs and tunes would never see the light of day. And I for one like to keep that link with my heritage and not have it overrun by singer/songwriters and pop music covers. I think there is a place for such music but to me it is not 'Folk' in the sense that I think of it.

And thats why I feel it is important to have these definitions of what is and what isn't Folk Music.

Ged

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: greg stephens
Date: 24 Mar 09 - 08:34 AM

What I alway say is(along with Bert Lloyd) is that if someone wants to include modern written songs in the category of folksongs, then they are duty bound to think up a good word to describe the things that used to be called folk songs.

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: Musket
Date: 24 Mar 09 - 08:27 AM

Funnily enough, if we MUST use definitions, then any piece of music is a folk song. Period.

All this 1954 nonsense fits if it happens to agree with your own definition, but as there is no one person who can say "I coined the phrase, therefore I decide what is and what isn't" then the only thing that makes it a folk song is if you think it is one.

I still say that here in The UK, folk music has many definitions. Funny that to hear an old recording of Benjamin Britten at the piano makes me want to polish my guns but hear the same song sung by a few mates with guitars and beer at the ready and I enjoy it as much as the next guy.

I say it again, (at the risk of Jim Carroll saying I am wrong, which I find a rather strange word to use when we are all giving opinions of something with no real answer??)

For me, folk music is amongst other things, any piece of music that tends to be played acoustically in an informal setting, usually within spitting distance of beer.

After all, everything is what you experience it to be?

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: GUEST, Sminky
Date: 24 Mar 09 - 05:32 AM

Yes indeed, but there are people around here who don't like that. Look how sneeringly often the term 'singer-songwriter' is used (which presumably includes people like Nic Jones and Martin Carthy).

It reminds me of my local car-boot sale - there are signs everywhere saying 'NO NEW GOODS'.

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: Mr Happy
Date: 24 Mar 09 - 04:47 AM

From '1954'

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

The above then means that even if the composer is known, the work can be a folk song?!?

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 22 Mar 09 - 05:17 PM

so do you say,that only traditional songs are folk songs.

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: Howard Jones
Date: 22 Mar 09 - 04:18 PM

"with contemporary folk song there are correct versions,   or perhaps you dont think Sammys Bar/ chicken on a raft are folk songs."

Actually, Dick, I don't think they are folk songs, in the strict sense. They're damn fine songs, and have enough in common stylistically with traditional songs to not seem out of place in a folk club. But they're not folk songs, although they may be well on their way to becoming that.

Subject: RE: What makes it a Folk Song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 22 Mar 09 - 03:56 PM

You can tell if someone is singing the wrong words to "Streets of London" or "American Pie", because there is a single, correct version of those songs. It is not possible to sing the wrong words to a folk song, because there is no correct version.[quote]
Howard,no,that only applies to a traditional Folksong,not a contemporary folksong,the writer of the song has every right[IF HE /SHE WISHES] to turn round and say,no, you are singing the wrong word, which is altering the meaning,example Cyril Tawneys, chicken on a raft[NAVAL SLANG egg on toast],becomes meaningless if sung as Chicken on a Rat.
haul away the diso [daighso],[SammysBar] becomes meaningless,if you sing haul way the Dino,or haul away the tiso.
with contemporary folk song there are correct versions,   or perhaps you dont think Sammys Bar/ chicken on a raft are folk songs.