1954 and All That - defining folk music

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Apr 09 - 04:28 PM

"does a definition matter to listening pleasure?"
Possibly not; though I would not attempt to insist on how others seek enjoyment.
But as a punter looking for folk music, how do I go about finding it and distinguishing it from the tat that SS would try to sell mein the guise of.....?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 10 Apr 09 - 06:57 PM

I rather liked feral folk JC, but the name's been baggsied for casual performances. Feral suggests a feeling for natural hybridity, music that outgrows the genre or performer; an aural lamprey, a bracket fungus, considered trifles, the end of roll stuff that defies definition and lives down the back of folk's settee, enthralling and outraging equally.

It deserves its own title certainly because technology has accelerated the changes that previously took centuries. Perhaps Fleetwood is a Darwinian hothouse, a Thomas Huxley to Lewes's Bishop Wilberforce?

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Apr 09 - 03:08 AM

Feral folk - hmm - sounds like a trip to the zoo by the Blue Peter team.
I have always seen the need for fine tuning the existing definition, but unless and until the singing traditions rise up from the grave and begin to incorporate the navel-gazing mumblers into the repertoire, I really can't see the point in re-definition, especially as the term is doing so well outside the folk-club greenhouses.
Let's face it, this thread started as an attempted challenge of the 1954 definition, and when that fell (at the first fence, as far as I'm concerned), it came down to "Ah well, definitions don't matter anyway."
Not long after I stumbled on this forum (don't think I was a member then) I got involved in a long, convoluted discussion with some burke whose argument ran something like this:
"If I wrote a song and passed it on to my mate, who then passed it on to his mate, then doesn't that make it traditional". His (I think it was a he; women tend to have much more down-to-earth logic about them) conclusion - that I should go off and find a designation other than 'traditional' for what I was doing.
Language doesn't work like that.
All that was, and this has been, is an Orwellian exercise by a small group within a small group, to manipulate our language for their own convenience - Newspeak - so to speak. Otherwise, I'm sure they would have been able to answer some of the fundamental contraditions in their argument. As it was, they didn't even address them.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Darowyn
Date: 11 Apr 09 - 03:46 AM

You have written eloquently about why traditional music means so much to you on another thread, Jim, and why you are so ready to leap to its defence, but I cannot agree with your assertion that there have been no counter arguments to your point of view. You are wilfully ignoring what you do not wish to read.
Dictionaries regularly update the meanings of words in the light of common parlance and usage.
Words do mean what people use them to mean. Can you refute that by any argument or example?
As an example of the "more down to earth" usage of language by women, I heard on the radio last week, a woman describing something that she and her family had done on holiday for the past two years.
"It has become a family tradition" she said.
Cheers
Dave

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 11 Apr 09 - 03:59 AM

What an extraordinary analysis of the thread! And typically myopic if I may say so JC. Orwellian? Newspeak? Challenge? Who are these barbarians at the gate of folk's civilisation?

Three things - traditional music, played exclusively almost nowhere (why one asks, and why dilute it with stuff traditionalists find incompatible with 1954?), second, the thing called folk which gets its own shows and festivals and thirdly what seems to happen in some clubs; the operetta, bawd, punk rock standard, 60s pop melancholia, sublimely talent free anarchy and free for all.

Number two has become 'folk' by any rational standards, one remains 'the tradition' - apparently too esoteric to support its own repertoire unaided - and three is presumably your 'navel-gazing mumblers', though in fairness I should point out some of my kosher '54 experiences involved ballardeers who were complete strangers to the notion of public performance.

That's yer contemporary folk scene mate!

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 11 Apr 09 - 04:04 AM

I'd suggest that most people decide whether or not a substance is cheese by taste and functional value as a foodstuff.

I love the idea of Folk Processed Cheese, and the wholesome rusticity implied by Cottage Cheese (which, in the words of Vic Reeves & Bob Mortimer, is not really a cheese but a residue, but a residue that is good for you) which, when pressed, is transformed into Farmer's Cheese, though I believe the Canadians have their own interpretation of that one.

Yesterday, being Good Friday, I bought myself a muckle braw block of Bowland, a particularly folksy cheese being a basic Creamy Lancashire enhanced by various sweet spices and fruits giving it character of, dare I say, fruitcake, though not one that could be said to be in any way discontented, or yet manifesting that discontent through any sort of complaint at all. On the contrary - for it is very good with chocolate, and when grilled on crumpets (Warburton's of course) the effect is akin to John J singing Thousand or More - which is to say, one is transported very much elsewhere, beyond the common realm certainly, even though that commonality is the core of Folk, which is, in any case, and I'm this I'm sure we'll all agree, better experienced than talked about. Rather like cheese.

Furthermore, I have been pretty much addicted to Gjetost, otherwise known as Gudbrandsdalsost, since a summer of 1969, a few weeks of which were spent in Norway, where I also acquired a lingering taste for the Eventyr of Absjorsen & Moe that form the core of my repertoire to this very day. My favourite Traditional English Song I refer to as Camembert Acoustique, which somehow acknowledges one of my favourite albums of all time and the fact that a certain Justly Renowned Singer of Traditional Folk Song & Balladry has been depicted wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the cover art. Cheese is mentioned in this song, along with other dairy produce, with the suggestion of sexual lubricant, so one might well ponder the type of cheese in question. Butter is famous in this respect of course, largely thanks to a 1973 film starring Marlon Brando, thus giving rise to my other name for this song Ultimo Tango a Wells-Next-The-Sea, which we visited last year on our Norfolk Holiday and were Much Impressed. Indeed, we had a notion that Butter and Cheese and All* would be a blinding name for a shop specialising in Norfolk dairy produce.

In our fridge right now are two other types of cheeses - a tub light Philadelphia (used mostly in cooking; goes well with pasta and spinach) and extra light Laughing Cow, my favourite cheese since childhood. Ten years ago if one collected the required number of tokens and sent them off with a postal order for 50p (or some such pittance) one would receive a Laughing Cow Alarm clock. Mine still has pride of place in my office, despite running a constant ten-minutes fast; the alarm, however, is the most un-cow-like laugh you might imagine, but then again never having actually heard a cow laugh I couldn't possibly say. Perhaps it samples an actual cow, laughing, in which case it is the perfect sound for this devilish little timepiece which is my pride and joy notwithstanding. I call her Henry Cow, after the band that never laughed, although the erstwhile drummer is credited with the Helsinki joke later used by Peter Blegvad in one of his Leviathan cartoons.

In the Miles Na Gopaleen Catechism of Cliché it is asked (and if I paraphrase I do so from memory) Which two substances are commonly held to be dissimilar?, to which the answer is, of course, Chalk and Cheese. I think perhaps some here like our Folk as Cheese, whilst others prefer Chalk. I can't think of too much to say about chalk, despite the lingering pedagogical associations which might well lead me down some other path, away from school as once I wondered, and am wandering still, happily astray, munching on a big block of Edam, and saving the wax to fashion into little red penguins as been my habit now for more than forty years.   

* For a video of my singing this song see : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3FRvTDWqnM, though Jim will no doubt find it more akin to bad pop singing than the True Folk it ought to be. For this I most assuredly do not apologise in advance.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Apr 09 - 04:24 AM

SS
Thanks for the clip - made my point perfectly.
Later
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 11 Apr 09 - 04:44 AM

made my point perfectly.

But what exactly is your point, Jim? Other than to establish there is such a thing as Folk Correctness, something so febrile that it no longer exists except in the haunted wet cheese delirious dreams (and nightmares) of the 1954 faithful because they can't bear the thoughts that they might have been wrong all this time, for you were sold a whole raft of specious shit in the first place which had more to do with the collectors than it ever did with the singers.

In this sense the Folk Revival is akin to Walt Disney driving lemmings over a cliff if only to prove that they did this by instinct. It is a gross falsification of the evidence by those whose main cause was to prove a theoretical agenda which had little or no basis in reality.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 11 Apr 09 - 05:13 AM

Thanks for the clip, SS. Top stuff!

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Apr 09 - 05:29 AM

My point is - unless you provide an answer to the contradictions generated by your arguments your point is lost.
Sorry, didn't intend to knee-jerk about your clip; on reflection - 'man sings humorous East Anglian song like an epic ballad while wrestling with a psaltry' should do the trick.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Apr 09 - 05:32 AM

Whoops sorry, it wasn't a psaltry, was it, just sounds like one.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 11 Apr 09 - 05:41 AM

Can you see daylight from that position Jim? It must take years of training.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 11 Apr 09 - 05:51 AM

I tried Gjetost once; I remember it had the tawny colour and the grainy texture of fudge, it tasted of bacon and it made me violently ill. I heard later on that it's made from whey, leading to quite fierce disagreements among cheese cognoscenti about whether it's a cheese in any sense of the word (with Gjetost fans on one side of the argument and everyone else on the other).

Just thought I'd mention it.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 11 Apr 09 - 06:37 AM

Whoops sorry, it wasn't a psaltry, was it, just sounds like one.

Funny the amount of Folkies who think my wee fiddle is a psaltery, using the term, as you do, in as an abbreviation of bowed psaltery - an entirely unmusical, unworkable, entirely modern invention which has very little to do with the psaltery in its actual sense, for which see Here (though I'm sure there are better pages). That the entirely bogus bowed psaltery has achieved a certain notoriety amongst the Folky Faithful is interesting, and telling. It is a Modern Folk Instrument, invented as such, to which is often attached the provence implying it is somehow related to the psaltery of old. Nothing could be further from the truth; in fact, in lineage, it descends from certain novelty parlour instruments played in America in the 1920s, such as the Ukelin.

My wee fiddle is a Karadeniz Kemence, aka Black Sea Fiddle, from Turkey, which became one of my instruments of choice completely by accident. It is the ideal instrument for the accompaniment of Traditional English Song & Ballad as I feel the clip more than adequately demonstrates even though, like the arrangement of the song itself, the prelude, interludes and coda are entirely improvised.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Apr 09 - 07:05 AM

"bowed psaltery - an entirely unmusical, unworkable....."
Depends on how good a musician you are, I suppose. Peggy Seeger uses to superb effect on the Blood and Roses set, on the ballad Queen Elenor's Confession (I think). Also (among others) on the contemporary song 'Swallow and Trout' (Saturday Night at The Bull and Mouth).
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Apr 09 - 09:45 AM

More time now.
"because they can't bear the thoughts that they might have been wrong all this time,"
All sniping aside; the problem I have with all this is, despite numerous requests you have failed to tell us what your alternative definition is based on. I still have no idea what you mean by 'designated folk context' so I can only assume that you would put the responsibilty for defining our music into the hands of a group of self-appointed individuals who are not even in the position of reaching some sort of a concensus among themselves. So their/your definition of 'folk' is purely an individual one.
You won't address the contradictions that this raises (string quartette, Dog And Duck vs Pindar of Wakefield, etc) so I can only assume that there are no solutions to them.
I may be a romantic, but I have done the groundwork - have you?
When we started collecting we had an extremely vague idea of what we were getting into. From the word 'go' we made a point of interviewing the people we were recording to attempt to find out how the tradition worked (or had once worked). With the Travellers we were extremely lucky. They still had a living tradition, songs were still being taken in by the community, adapted, remade, and passed on, and most importantly, new songs were still being made and absorbed. All this within a non-literate community.
The point is the 54 definition worked; it needed some tweaking, but it was a valid description of what happened within a given community.
All the work we did is freely accessible to be verified at The British Library or in Merrion Square.
If you can provide any information to show where we went wrong and why our work was "a gross falsification of the evidence by those whose main cause was to prove a theoretical agenda which had little or no basis in reality", I really would be interested to hear it.
Yours in anticipation
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Rifleman (inactive)
Date: 11 Apr 09 - 12:44 PM

Gawd! 'e don' 'alf goo on...we've 'eard all before, and I still say play the bloody music and stop rabbiting on about in dusty archives, digital or otherwise.

D''ave any other tunes in your repetoire?

"The point is the 54 definition worked; it needed some tweaking, but it was a valid description of what happened within a given community."

the whole statement is in the past tense...suggestive?

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Apr 09 - 01:01 PM

"Gawd! 'e don' 'alf goo on...we've 'eard all befor"
Still strugling with the spelling I see.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Rifleman (inactive)
Date: 11 Apr 09 - 02:11 PM

No more than you're struggling to convince all and sundry that 1954 is in anyway, shape or form, relevant

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Apr 09 - 02:14 PM

Why do people have to be so childishly rude in these discussions?
As I said before, grow up.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Rifleman (inactive)
Date: 11 Apr 09 - 02:25 PM

That's the best you can come up with..? Doesn't bode well for the future does it
I grew up along time ago, you apparently can't leave past where it belongs, in the past.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 11 Apr 09 - 03:34 PM

I may be a romantic, but I have done the groundwork - have you?

Oh yes - not that what I'm saying is rocket science exactly, simply a matter of accepting that what happens in The Name of Folk Song these days is anything but Folk Song according to the 1954 Definition.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 11 Apr 09 - 04:31 PM

OK, quick quiz. SS, glueman, Rifleman, whoever (you know who you are): complete the following sentence.

I don't mind people using the word 'folk' in lots of different ways because:

(a) I don't care how people use the word 'folk'.

(b) I think it's a good thing that people use the word 'folk' in lots of different ways.

or

(c) I think it's a good thing that people use the word 'folk' in the ways that they use it.

Anyone?

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 11 Apr 09 - 04:44 PM

You been at the Gjetost again, Pip?

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Apr 09 - 04:13 AM

Don't bother Pip, you're pissing in the wind if you expect a straight answer to any questions - silence is golden, as the old 'folksong' (as long as it's sung in a designated folk context) says,
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 12 Apr 09 - 04:43 AM

I didn't understand the questions. Happy easter, passover, eostre anyhow.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 12 Apr 09 - 05:12 AM

Sorry about that, Pip; after three bottles of ice cold Greene King Sun Dance last night I was feeling a tad flippant. Coincidently, Sun-Dance is also the word for the weekend on my Forgotten English desk calendar, the belief being that the sun came up dancing on Easter morning. Whatever the truth of that, I did not rise dancing myself this morning; it a very fine beer though - more of a lager I'd say, hence I drink it chilled.

Anyway back to your questions - I don't mind people using the word 'folk' in lots of different ways because.... Seems it's all about not caring, or else thinking, which brings in opinion, and subjectivity, which, as far as is humanly possibly, I'm trying to avoid here by looking at the situation as objectively as possible. And just as I do care, I certainly don't think, because the evidence is overwhelming. So can I say N/A?

The main problem I have with the 1954 Definition (and its conventional interpretation) is that like a lot of other Folkloric theory it romanticises community by effectively denying the creative genius of the individual. My feeling is that the creative work of the singers is overlooked in defining them merely as song carriers, who are part of The Tradition, the mechanism of which is The Folk Process.

Defining a song as Anon or Traditional isn't just saying we don't who the songwriter was, rather it subscribes to the notion that these songs are a product of a cultural process in which individual creativity somehow didn't matter. No doubt this is why the 1954 Definition has absurd clauses as: a community uninfluenced by popular and art music and it is the re-fashioning and re-creation of the music by the community that gives it its folk character.

It is my increasing conviction that many of the songs we now think of as Traditional are the specific creations of the individual singers who have taken the songs from other individual singers and purposefully adapted them to their own purposes. This is is the Folk Process in a nutshell - and it's still happening. We may well find echoes of John England's Seeds of Love in other songs, but to what extent might Seeds of Love be John England's creation? Or must (in the patronising eyes of Folklorist for whom such a Grubby Rustic couldn't possibly be responsible having created his own song) John England be consigned to the status of song carrier entirely passive to a process of which he is as unaware of as the fish of the water through which it swims?

There is precedence for this cultural paternalism in other aspects of folklore (see, for example, the thread Folklore: The Green man); indeed, it might be argued that our very concept of Folklore is very much the product of such cultural paternalism, the gathering of such Quaint Rusticity for the Amusement of the Gentry. Again, how could these Grubby Illiterate Rustics possibly be responsible for the creation of such beautiful songs? Heavens, they couldn't possibly have written them, so there must be an Oral Tradition to which they themselves are merely paying unwitting and innocent lipservice, and in so doing, continuing The Folk Process - which is something else they couldn't possibly understand.

In working with Seeds of Love last autumn for my Naked Season album it occurred to me that this song was very much John England's creation; a song he'd made out of elements of other songs he'd heard, bringing it together into one cohesive whole as an expression of his personal life experience. A bit of a epiphany - for in singing it I was no longer singing an Anonymous Traditional Folk Song, but a very purposeful and particular creation of a named individual. To hear my version, go to www.myspace.com/sedayne - it's the first song you'll hear there. I won't say anything here about the musical accompaniment (rough music?) but if anyone wants to know, then by all means PM me!

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Apr 09 - 03:09 PM

…… creative work of the singers is overlooked in defining them merely as song carriers, who are part of The Tradition, the mechanism of which is The Folk Process."
The creative work of the singers is certainly not being overlooked by the definition, on the contrary, the whole folk process acknowledges the creativity of the singers in making, taking and reshaping the songs. The creativity lies in the re-fashioning and interpreting. It just acknowledges the fact that the original creators are unknown.
The term 'song carriers' was used by MacColl to describe singers who may not have been part of a living tradition, but rather had remembered the songs when they were collected.

"Defining a song as Anon or Traditional isn't just saying we don't who the songwriter was,"
That is exactly what it is saying – the author is unknown and the song has passed through an extensive process of recreation and change over distance and time.
Most songs started life as specific creations of individual singers or poets, though there is evidence that some were created by more than one composer.
We don't know whether singers consciously adapted and changed the songs, whether they misheard them, or whether they automatically fitted them in to the style they were used to; we simply don't have that information.
Walter Pardon's tunes have been described as unique (see Mike Yates article in Musical Traditions) yet Walter was not sure whether he was singing them the way he had learned them (he thought he was) or whether he had unconsciously adapted them from standard tunes. One suggestion was that, because he had used a melodeon to memorise the tunes, (he was a fairly rudimentary player) the key he had chosen may have influenced their outcome.

"It is my increasing conviction that many of the songs we now think of as Traditional are the specific creations of the individual singers who have taken the songs from other individual singers and purposefully adapted them to their own purposes".
Can a song taken from another singer be "specific creations of individual singers"? Re-creations yes, that's what the folk process is. Whether the changes are accidental or deliberate are unknown and totally irrelevant to this argument.

"in the patronising eyes of Folklorist for whom such a Grubby Rustic couldn't possibly be responsible having created his own song".
Loaded language such as this from somebody who appears to have not spent a great deal of time talking to traditional singers really doesn't help your case'. Of course country singers have been patronised by some collectors, but no more so than by revival singers who refuse to acknowledge definitions because "traditional singers didn't recognise the difference between the different types of song in their repertoire, so why should we".

"John England be consigned to the status of song carrier……"
Was he; I've always heard him referred to as a traditional singer. Acknowledging as singer as being 'traditional' is not to devalue their role or ability. It might be worth your while biting the bullet and having a closer look at the 'academic' writings of collectors like Lomax, Randolph, Goldstein, Mike Yates and some of the people who stepped out of the rarified atmosphere of the clubs to take a look at the singing traditions first hand.

"Heavens, they couldn't possibly have written them….."
Nobody has ever said that the songs materialised out of thin air; only that we have no idea of their origins.

"The Folk Process - which is something else they couldn't possibly understand."
Again, Walter Pardon understood the folk process quite well; far better than most revivalists I have met see Pat and my article on him entitled 'A Simple Countryman?'
I'm afraid much of what you have said here appears to be an exercise in tearing apart straw men of your own creation. Collecting and scholarship has changed a great deal since Sharp's day – read a book.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Apr 09 - 03:26 PM

I meant to add;
It is not those who acknowledge the unique role of traditional singers as recreators who are the patronisers; rather it is those who would seek to lump them in with revivalists, singer-songwriters, parlour balladists, music hall performers, C and Westerners.... and all the other different types of performers use the folk clubs to hang their hats on nowadays.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 12 Apr 09 - 03:31 PM

I can't be the only one choking on the ease with which the original songwriter is dismissed. Without in any way diminishing the process of domestication and localisation of a song, its popularity must have been in large part due to the excellence of the original material.

By all means fetishise transference but 'anon' does not only mean unknown in the traditional context, it suggests the real fun started after it was written - not only a challenge to authorship but a complete dismissal of its importance.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Don Firth
Date: 12 Apr 09 - 04:19 PM

"The main problem I have with the 1954 Definition (and its conventional interpretation) is that like a lot of other Folkloric theory it romanticises community by effectively denying the creative genius of the individual. My feeling is that the creative work of the singers is overlooked in defining them merely as song carriers, who are part of The Tradition, the mechanism of which is The Folk Process."

I don't know, SS. Perhaps it's because we live in different parts of the world, but I have not found that to be the case. I find that there is plenty of latitude for creativity in choosing which version of a song I will sing, more often than not out of many to choose from, how I will sing it, how I will accompany it, and whether or not I will sing the words as I find them or make judicious modifications—without altering the meaning—in order to make a line more singable.

I know that there are folkies who are adamant about singing a song exactly as is, the way they heard someone sing it on a field recording, or exactly as they found it in a song book. The first is pointless because, first of all, the person on the field recording sang the song their own way, which was probably not exactly the same way they learned it, and second, if the field recording is the "definitive version," this brings the folk process to a screeching halt; why bother to learn the song? Just play the recording! And secondly, written music and a set of words in a book only give the most rudimentary idea of how a song (or any piece of music, for that matter) should be performed. And this also goes for classical music learned from a score. You can't help but bring a measure of creativity to learning a piece of music and performing it because you are using your own notions of how it should be done.

Every time a song is performed, it is a re-creation of that song. No singer, no matter how cleverly imitative they are, can sing a song exactly the same way someone else sang it. And further, no individual singer can sing a song exactly the same way every time.

I don't think anyone is cavalierly "dismissing" the original songwriter. With any given song, someone wrote it. And with traditional songs, oftentimes a new set of words is grafted to an existing tune—or vice versa—or an existing song is modified to meet new circumstances or tell a new story. But in the vast majority of cases with traditional songs, we don't know who this person is or who these people are. Who wrote "Barbara Allen?" Who wrote "Jock o' Braidesley?" Were these original songs? Or were they re-doings of prior songs? But they have been modified over time, either intentionally or unintentionally (by mis-hearing words or forgetting them and trying to reconstruct them).

This is the form that communal authorship takes. "Communal authorship" does not mean that a committee of people called a meeting and got together to write a song, although a few early song collecters believed this to be the case.

So with a song like "The Water is Wide" (many versions composed of "floating verses"—verses found in different contexts in other songs) or "The Streets of Laredo" (an example of an old song rewritten to fit new circumstances), who is the original songwriter?

Or did John Jacob Niles invent all folk songs in his basement back in 1910 as he was sometimes given to claim?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 03:17 AM

SS
The more I read your posting the angrier I become.

"In working with Seeds of Love last autumn for my Naked Season album……."
So you got your 'road to Damascus' conversion as long ago as last Autumn?   Some of us 'patonising folklorists' annd researchers have been screaming our message about the creative abilities of our source singers from the rooftops for the greater parts of our lives, largely to deaf ears. The response we often got was summed up nicely by our gun nut friend on this thread a few postings ago:
"I still say play the bloody music and stop rabbiting on about in dusty archives, digital or otherwise."

When we attempted to get our message across, quite often we were greeted by yelps of 'Folk Police', or 'finger-in-ear', or more recently, 'woolly jumper' (have to say, that's a new one on me – never been called one of them before). Childish names such as these (not so much schoolyard childish – rather Lord of the Flies childish) are designed to silence the dissenting voice and quite often manage to make the lives of the dissenters uncomfortable and pretty miserable.
When we ask for real folk music at our folk clubs we are told that 'If we put that sort of stuff on we'll scare away our audiences' – now there's patronising for you - towards the audiences who, it is believed, can't, or won't take the real thing (oooo, those long ballads, how frightfully boring!!!). And doesn't it show wonderful confidence in our traditional music eh???

We didn't always get it right, but at least we PFs got up off our folkie bums and went and found what our few remaining traditional singers had to say. As far as possible we made our findings available to the general public and we (dustily) archived our material with full public access. We even managed (often out of our own pockets, or by relying on the generosity of fellow enthusiasts), to make some of it readily available on CDs.
I presume you were one of those who availed yourself of the wonderful Robert Cinnamond album recorded by that 'patronising folklorist' Sean O'Boyle which was issued by Topic some 3 decades ago (I believe that the sales never made it into three figures).   Or how about 'Bonny Green Tree', the album put together by another 'patronising academic', Tom Munnelly, from his recordings of John Reilly, the Traveller who gave us The Maid and the Palmer (usually referred to as Christie Moore's The Well Below The Valley). The sales of that one were pitifully small, John Reilly died of malnutrition in a derelict house in Boyle and The Maid and the Palmer was copyrighted by Phil Coulter.

And what do you offer in place of our 'dusty folklore'? A Tinkerbell world of 'anything goes – as long as it's in 'a designated folk context', where the real folk songs, quite frankly, are not welcome.
Thanks, but no thanks.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 04:10 AM

"By all means fetishise transference but 'anon' does not only mean unknown in the traditional context, it suggests the real fun started after it was written - not only a challenge to authorship but a complete dismissal of its importance."

What nonsense! 'Anon' means we don't know who wrote it because history doesn't tell us!

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 04:32 AM

Thanks, but no thanks.

Thing is, Jim - I agree with pretty much everything you say, as evidenced by your reaction to my last post. Odd how after 35 years it did come as revelation that the craft and creativity of the individual singers was the single most crucial element of what I'd hitherto been sold as the quasi-mystical Folk Process, because, as Glueman points out, Anon or Traditional mean a whole lot more than simply author unknown. Every word of your last few posts is music to my ears, as is the singing of John Reilly by the way, though I confess that I've never heard of the Robert Cinnamond record - I did have one of the Folktrax cassettes, though where it is now I couldn't possibly say*.

The main purpose of this thread was, in essence, to sort out the wheat from the chaff - the wheat being Traditional Song, the chaff being all the other stuff currently being done In the Name of Folk, and carries the greater pragmatic weight by way of definition. I came up with the term Designated Folk Context simply as a means of giving unity to the sort disparate amateurism whereby any genre of music might become Folk according to who is playing it and where it is played. But please note I am not making this up; this is what happens in all the folk clubs I have been to in the last 35 years - and has been the cause of much despair in my life for a most of that time. Throughout this thread I have attempted, for the most part, to be objective & dispassionate - on one hand I can see great value in the folk scene as it stands and those who facilitate it as such, BUT, as a consequence, I can no longer think of Traditional Song as being Folk Song simply to avoid the generality of the latter association. Whatever the rule, however, there will always be exceptions. Deo Gratias.

* I hear there are plans afoot to compile the Kennedy archive into a VOTP style series of CD compilations. All very laudable I'm sure, but better by far would be to make the entire thing available as an on-line resource, as with The Max Hunter Archive. Talk about flogging a dead horse.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 04:35 AM

But the tradition does not valorise the unknown author, 1954 suggests that known authorship precludes the music being folk. Where is the appreciation of the skill of songwriting in that?

My single biggest gripe against the definition is its privileging of obscurity over artizan composing. The idea that 'common music' moves beyond the pale for the sole reason of discovering who wrote the original text seems perverse, unless its to validate the collector over the performer.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 04:50 AM

1954 suggests that known authorship precludes the music being folk

If you think that's the case, you really haven't understood what we're talking about. The definition is all about transmission, not composition.

My single biggest gripe against the definition is its privileging of obscurity over artizan composing.

The definition distinguishes songs that have reached us one way from songs that have reached us another way. It doesn't 'privilege' anything.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 05:48 AM

If you think that's the case, you really haven't understood what we're talking about.

If that's the case, Pip - I've been labouring under a similar delusion for the last 35 years, which isn't entirely inconceivable I grant you. I think Glueman's bang on the nail there: By all means fetishise transference but 'anon' does not only mean unknown in the traditional context. Indeed, there is a lot of extra baggage carried by Anon or Traditional right up to the point where, as both yourself and Jim have suggested, the conditions for such transference, if it happened at all (which I personally don't believe it did) no longer exist!

I was singing one of Tommy Armstrong's songs recently - The Marla Hill Ducks - a true story, written in dialect to the traditional Northumbrian melody of The Wild Hills o' Wannies. Here was a master versifier writing well within a tradition of narrative folk song; his songs haven't been transferred via any sort of Folk Process, rather they have remained as he wrote them. In my heart, and the hearts of many, they are Traditional Songs, written a known individual and sung by many who regard him with considerable awe. I would hazard a guess that all the traditional songs we know are the work of similar individual genii; master craftsmen, sadly anonymous if only because the collectors had a particular point to prove regarding the communal nature of The Tradition.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 06:55 AM

" ... sadly anonymous if only because the collectors had a particular point to prove regarding the communal nature of The Tradition."

No, no, no!! "Sadly anonymous" because the names of the authors weren't written down! You are surely not suggesting that we should 'demonise' the collectors because of this? In most cases the anonymous nature of the songs was outside of the collectors' control.

Or are you suggesting that Baring Gould, C. Sharp. RVW, P. Grainger et. al. were able (via some mystic process) to divine the authors of the songs but neglected to pass this information on? Are their 'secret notebooks', containing these data, stashed in some archive somewhere just waiting to be stumbled on?

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 07:11 AM

"are you suggesting that Baring Gould, C. Sharp. RVW, P. Grainger et. al. were able (via some mystic process) to divine the authors of the songs but neglected to pass this information on?"

Are you suggesting the songs are remarkable because they couldn't find them?

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 08:01 AM

Sorry, the 'Guest' at '06:55 AM' was me.

What the 'Guest' at '07:11 AM' was on about - I'm not sure. I don't understand the question. I certainly didn't remark on the 'remarkability' of any songs because they happen to be anonymous - they just are, and no-one can now do anything about it.

Having said all that the anonymity of some folk songs (not all) is a 'red herring' and always has been. I say 'not all' because we do know the authors of some songs (e.g. 'The Famous Flower of Serving Men' is usually attributed to a 17th Century ballad writer named Laurence Price - and his name appears in Roy Palmer's, 'A Book of British Ballads' (first pub. 1980). Likewise I believe that 'A Rosebud in June' first appeared in an 18th Century play - and a bit of diligent searching could probably come up with the author. The fact that we don't know the original authors of the vast majority of songs is, to quote Bert Lloyd, "an accident of history".

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 08:02 AM

" ... sadly anonymous if only because the collectors had a particular point to prove regarding the communal nature of The Tradition."

No, no, no!! "Sadly anonymous" because the names of the authors weren't written down! You are surely not suggesting that we should 'demonise' the collectors because of this? In most cases the anonymous nature of the songs was outside of the collectors' control.

Or are you suggesting that Baring Gould, C. Sharp. RVW, P. Grainger et. al. were able (via some mystic process) to divine the authors of the songs but neglected to pass this information on? Are their 'secret notebooks', containing these data, stashed in some archive somewhere just waiting to be stumbled on?

*

"are you suggesting that Baring Gould, C. Sharp. RVW, P. Grainger et. al. were able (via some mystic process) to divine the authors of the songs but neglected to pass this information on?"

Are you suggesting the songs are remarkable because they couldn't find them?

Good points, GUEST (S) - & welcome too; but by posting them as GUEST you run the risk of deletion. Could you post them again using a name? I've put them in this post just in case.

In a discussion recently it was revealed that Baring-Gould was of the opinion that the Traditional Singers were too ignorant to fully appreciate the symbolism of the songs they sang. This speaks volumes for the regard in which our heroes were held, and such, indeed, is the way of the folklorist; driven to falsify the facts to fit their pet theories. In many cases, it is their legacy we're dealing with here - as has already been discussed A.L.Lloyd wasn't above doing this himself.

Conspiracy? Perish the thought! After all, this is only the legacy of thousands years of feudal suppression we're dealing with here.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 08:03 AM

Cross post noted, Shimrod! Catch you later.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 08:20 AM

Anon was me. There's a theme developing that if people don't agree with the conclusions of 1954 they're a bit stupid or the don't understand the issues.

My hash would be settled by the simple expedient of traditionalists stating the work of known authors can be folk. Until then I see the definition as being arbitrary and sentimental and the underlying polemic artificial. Just one name under the wire would do.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: GUEST,Strippers Routines
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 10:33 AM

My hash would be settled by the simple expedient of traditionalists stating the work of known authors can be folk.

Indeed, and as stated in the MCMLIV Shibboleth: variation which springs from the creative impulse of the individual AND can likewise be applied to music which has originated with an individual composer - however, this is fucked up by the absurd caveat and has subsequently been absorbed into the unwritten living tradition of a community. Unwritten living tradition? WTF? Ah, the sweet romance of it all! Hardly the wonder the International Folk Music Council changed their name! I once saw a bunch of kids marching along in a Northumbrian Colliery Village, circa 1980, singing Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall in perfect unison, note & word perfect, until they came to the last line which became all in all I'm just another prick without balls. Unwritten Living Tradition, or rather Unwitting Living Tradition as such things invariably are in the more mundane areas of The Living Folkloric Traditions of Our Green and Pleasant Land - and it fits the MCMLIV Shibboleth like a proverbial old shoe.

Talking of old shoe and folklore, in a recent episode of The Apprentice, one of the hopefuls used the colourful expression he couldn't pour shit from a shoe if the instructions were printed on the heel; I've since heard this four times in the field, as it were, and the two occasions I asked after provenance, both sources claimed never to have watched The Apprentice. Methinks I'll be keeping my ears to the ground on this one!

Meanwhile, I have further thoughts on this to impart anon which my present circumstance prohibits, hence the Guest name, which is, of course, an anagram of, yours truly:

Sinister Supporter

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 12:00 PM

"My hash would be settled by the simple expedient of traditionalists stating the work of known authors can be folk."

Your hash is settled! The work of known authors can be folk ... and who said that they couldn't?

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Goose Gander
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 12:15 PM

"Baring-Gould was of the opinion that the Traditional Singers were too ignorant to fully appreciate the symbolism of the songs they sang . . . . This speaks volumes for the regard in which our heroes were held, and such, indeed, is the way of the folklorist; driven to falsify the facts to fit their pet theories . . ."

You are painting with a very broad brush. Baring-Gould was condescending toward the singers from whom he collected, therefore ALL folklorists are 'bad guys' and liars? And this comes from someone who defended A. L. Lloyd's fabrications in a recent thread!

"Conspiracy? Perish the thought! After all, this is only the legacy of thousands years of feudal suppression we're dealing with here."

So feudalism lasted thousands of years in the British Isles? That is a very interesting statement. But perhaps you yourself are a folklorist, and hence are 'driven to falsify the facts to to fit your pet theories'?

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 12:26 PM

"The work of known authors can be folk"

Cheers Shimrod, I'll get to work on my list.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 01:11 PM

"The work of known authors can be folk"
Only if it is taken over by the community, adapted and changed to the extent that it appears in distinct versions and is no longer recognised as the work of an individual author.
"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 re-fashioning and re-creation of the music by the community that gives it its folk character"
IFMC 1954.

More later,
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Don Firth
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 01:22 PM

GUEST, Strippers Routines, the expression "he couldn't pour shit (piss) from a shoe (boot) if the instructions were printed on the heel," along with miscellaneous variations thereof, is one I have heard from time to time for decades. It did not originate in a recent television show.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 01:25 PM

So an individual known author can create folk music so long as it is "no longer recognised as the work of an individual author".

Tricky stuff this tradition.