1954 and All That - defining folk music

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 05:47 PM

The IFMC still exist, the name has been changed. They do not tend to use the term "Folk Music, having long ago replaced it with "tradition music", and they lean more toward "Ethnomusicology" to describe their work.

So, there we have it - the International Council for Traditional Music. Maybe they got wise to the nebulosity of the the term Folk Music too. Their objective: to assist in the study, practice, documentation, preservation and dissemination of traditional music and dance, including folk, popular, classical, urban, and other genres, of all countries. One wonders how much credence they still give to the 1954 definition of Folk Music - after all, 55 years is a long for an academic theory to remain unchallenged. In the reactionary backwaters of the Folk Revival 55 years is just about long enough for it to become written in stone. Ethnomusicology is defined (by Carole Pegg) as the study of social and cultural aspects of music and dance in local and global contexts. I've known ethnomusicologists do their post-graduate research into everything from Gamelan of Java to the Barbour Shop Quartets of Teeside. I dare say, too, one might study the Folk Songs of amateur Folk Singers as practised in the Folk Clubs of Lancashire irrespective of whether or not what they're singing fits with some archaic criteria that to many here has such an absolute currency.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: The Sandman
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 06:03 PM

There might be one or two people who need a little re-education though. From another thread - "For more than 30 years Mudcat's Dick Miles has been play and writing traditional music in England and Ireland."
Snail,
he probably meant,playing traditional music and writing traditional sounding music,I am pleased he liked my music,that is all that matters as far as I am concerned.
it will not be the first time songs have been mistaken for traditional.
Bob Dylan is one person who has made this mistake on occasions.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 06:52 PM

M.Ted, thank you for this:

The "dispute" over the meaning of the word folk is actually over, and has been for a long time--as mentioned above, researchers, academics, anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, have moved on and found other words, and definitions for what they do.

The word "Folk" has pretty much been left for people to use as they please--the discussions about definitions here are pretty much irrelevant to anything--

I have said more than once in these threads that the work folk needs to be simply abandoned as something useful.

""Folk" as an adjective is almost completely worthless. Take any phrase that has it and remove the word "folk" and you'll find that the phrase still means exactly the same thing, without the excess verbiage."

I was with Sinister Supporter at the beginning of this, as I think his idea of "folk" being "anything designated as such" is basic common sense -- from a pragmatic, descriptivist perspective. Then he started to make what I see as an irrelevant (and inaccurate) division between "academics" and non-academics, in order to dismiss "academic" notions. Lost me there. The reason being, that, as M.Ted says, "academics" have questioned and argued over "folk" from all these perspectives, including the supposed non-academic perspective that S.S. advocates.

This is why I never use the word "folk" when I am trying to convey something precisely or trying to understand something truly. This is why, sorry to tell you Sinister S, true "academics" rarely use the word; it's very old fashioned-- consider that the Society for Ethnomusicology, ushering in a newer approach, was formed in 1955. Now, I may use the term, for convenience's sake, in those "designated contexts" where imprecision is desired or where mutual understanding is implicit (like Mudcat, for example).

In the first type of scenario, it is meaningless and excess verbiage. In the second case, not using "folk" could mean having to use excess. Isn't this the case with most words?

Use it or lose it. Words are functional.

Gibb

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 07:13 PM

Gibb - get over yourself and read my last post.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 07:21 PM

Sinister,

One wonders how much credence they still give to the 1954 definition of Folk Music - after all, 55 years is a long for an academic theory to remain unchallenged.

Yes! See, this is what has had me confused about some of your statements. Since it is such a long time, i.e. since common sense dictates that it probably would have been challenged many times, why have you preceded to characterize "academics" as if they adhered to 1950s ideas? Even if you were not aware that they had not, you'd have had reasonable doubt. I have been scratching my head, and I gave up on posting to these topics because the logic didn't make sense to me, because...The idea of "folk song" is decidedly not academic. Maybe all along you've meant "amateur academic," "crappy academic," "weekend academic," or "non-academic academic"?

I think what you really mean is "folk academic"!

I dare say, too, one might study the Folk Songs of amateur Folk Singers as practised in the Folk Clubs of Lancashire irrespective of whether or not what they're singing fits with some archaic criteria that to many here has such an absolute currency.

I dare say they have done that many times over. But the focus would be more on the cultural who? - what? - when? - why? of it, less than how it was labeled.

Gibb

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 07:25 PM

Gibb - get over yourself and read my last post.

!
My timing here is off (lots of typing/reading), but I eventually got there.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: TheSnail
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 07:35 PM

Gibb Sahib

I think what you really mean is "folk academic"!

No Sahib, he means "traditional academic".

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: TheSnail
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 07:45 PM



he probably meant,playing traditional music and writing traditional sounding music

I can only go by what he said. I'll leave it to you to put him right.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Sleepy Rosie
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 02:44 AM

Another serious organisation focused on research into 'traditional song' preferencing the term 'traditional' here, with some names I recognise:

TFS Website

TFS Yahoo Group

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 06:51 AM

Then he started to make what I see as an irrelevant (and inaccurate) division between "academics" and non-academics, in order to dismiss "academic" notions.

Maybe I did at that, Gibb - but the divisions are in no way irrelevant, nor yet are they inaccurate. On one hand you have the thing that is being studied, and on the other you have the academics who are studying it. The thing exists quite happily without the academics - as in the case of people singing and playing music as part of their day to day life without realising that what they're doing is Folk Music, or Traditional Music, or Ethnic Music. It's the academics who decide that - then they decide what Folk Music is (and by implication what it isn't), and so they come up with a set of criteria to determine that.

Such criteria however, is just a theory, just as The Folk Process is just a theory. As theories they remain fluid, but somehow they have been seized upon by the Folk Faithful who assume that because they have once enjoyed a degree of academic sanction that they must, therefore, be objectively true. Thus does a theory become a theology - a theology which accounts for much of the reactions we have seen in this thread, by the non-academic folk-faithful carrying the dead weight of redundant theory around with them as if it was fact if only to justify that what they're doing is, therefore, Real Folk Music. We used to see reasoning like that from WAV, who, for all his qualifications in the field of anthropology believed that the only way forward for humanity was the implementation of Ethnic Cleansing. I see similar ideas afoot here, where what is, after all, merely personal taste must be then be justified, indeed sanctified, with respect of what has become the Holy Law of the 1954 Definition - and woe betide the heretic who dares suggest otherwise.

It matters not to me whether the academics at the ICTM still abide by the 1954 Definition or still believe in the fairy tale that is The Folk Process. I used to believe in it myself until I realised there are other far more plausible ways to account for such things (such as individual creativity and vernacular variation, things which still occur, and will keep on occurring as long as people sing songs) - and that consequently once we remove The Folk Process, what we have come to think of as The Tradition might not actually exist beyond the imaginations of those who really, really want it to. Preciousness is all very well, but Fundamentalism is unforgivable. One thing in which there can be no dispute however, is that the music exists, likewise the songs, and what makes it Folk Music is the context in which it occurs and the individual singers and musicians who, whether they believe in the 1954 Definition or not, keep it very much alive simply because it suits them very nicely to do so.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 06:58 AM

PS -

Thanks for those links, Rosie.

Here's another which I'd say is the most important page any self respect Folky / Traddy should have bookmarked if they didn't already:

http://www.tradsong.org/link.html

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 07:16 AM

"Such criteria however, is just a theory, just as The Folk Process is just a theory. As theories they remain fluid, but somehow they have been seized upon by the Folk Faithful who assume that because they have once enjoyed a degree of academic sanction that they must, therefore, be objectively true. Thus does a theory become a theology - a theology which accounts for much of the reactions we have seen in this thread, by the non-academic folk-faithful carrying the dead weight of redundant theory around with them as if it was fact if only to justify that what they're doing is, therefore, Real Folk Music. We used to see reasoning like that from WAV, who, for all his qualifications in the field of anthropology believed that the only way forward for humanity was the implementation of Ethnic Cleansing. I see similar ideas afoot here, where what is, after all, merely personal taste must be then be justified, indeed sanctified, with respect of what has become the Holy Law of the 1954 Definition - and woe betide the heretic who dares suggest otherwise."

What utter specious nonsense!

As a scientist I know that all theories are provisional and can be replaced by alternative, more comprehensive theories with greater explanatory power. I have not, to date, seen any such comprehensive, alternative theory emerge from the Folk World. All I've encountered are Dave Harker's outrageous and mischievous proposition that the wicked Middle Classes stole the Workers' Music (a view endlessly expounded by WLD until he left this forum) and an endless stream of people who demand that 'experts' should admit their particular favourite form(s) of contemporary music to the Folk Canon - and, presumably, take some sort of responsibility for such decisions (?) To this latter group my view has always been - Go away, make your own decisions, and take responsibility for them!

As for bringing 'Ethnic Cleansing' and 'heretic hunting' into this discussion, that is really, really beneath contempt! Those of us who happen to believe that the 1954 definition has great explanatory power (in spite of its age - it is, in fact, younger than me!) have no desire to dictate what other people listen to and no power to enforce anything even if we wanted to. Disagreeing with an alternative point of view is NOT the same as heresy hunting.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: GUEST,Working Radish
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 07:19 AM

Please don't bring WAVery into this. I put as much time and energy into trying to argue sense into that guy as anyone here.

what is, after all, merely personal taste must be then be justified, indeed sanctified, with respect of what has become the Holy Law of the 1954 Definition - and woe betide the heretic who dares suggest otherwise

What - or who - are you talking about? As some of us keep saying, "these things are different from those things" is not a value judgment.

the fairy tale that is The Folk Process. I used to believe in it myself until I realised there are other far more plausible ways to account for such things (such as individual creativity and vernacular variation, things which still occur, and will keep on occurring as long as people sing songs

Individual creativity and vernacular variation aren't an alternative explanation to the folk process - they're a central part of it. And yes, they still occur, but clean, unaltered reproduction of songs with their words and tune intact occurs a lot more. As I said above, there's more to the folk process than variation, just as there's more to evolution than the occurrence of mutations.

the music exists, likewise the songs, and what makes it Folk Music is the context in which it occurs

Is Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez folk music? I've heard it at a folk club.

Really, it comes down to one question: is it ever possible to listen to someone performing at a folk club or singaround and then say, "that was good but it's not what I'd call folk music"?

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 08:49 AM

Hmmmm - Methinks I'll ignore Shimrod's post as being typical of the fundamentalist hysteria I've encountered on this thread thus far. I will, however, take issue with his calling my last post specious - nothing in the world is more specious that the 1954 Definition or yet its adoption as absolute by the Folk Faithful. As I've indicated here already, maybe WLD had a point after all...

Otherwise:   

As some of us keep saying, "these things are different from those things" is not a value judgment.

To say that a Folk Song can only be a Traditional Song is a value judgement; it is rejecting all the other music that occurs within a Folk Context as not being real Folk Music because it is judged not to be so by a set of (quite possibly specious) criteria. Accordingly, most of what will be heard at, say, The Fylde Folk Festival this year won't actually be Folk Music, and most of what will be heart at The Steamer Folk Club tonight won't actually be Folk Music. It also says that the 100% improvised music I play on folk instruments isn't Folk Music, nor yet is 97% of Kip of the Serenes by Dr Strangely Strange. How is that not a value judgement?   

Individual creativity and vernacular variation aren't an alternative explanation to the folk process - they're a central part of it.

Individual creativity and vernacular variation are an observable alternative to a theory which in no way can be subjected to any sort of empirical scrutiny. The evidence is circumstantial and the interpretation of that evidence as a Folk Process remains suspiciously (and quite possible speciously) convenient. Interestingly, I first came across the term in a sleeve-note by Roger Nicolson to his 1976 album Times and Traditions for Dulcimer thus: Almaine. Adapted from a piece based on a traditional dance form by Bartholomew Penkil (?-1670) in the Baltic Lute Book. The folk process continues...

I'm cool with that.      

Is Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez folk music? I've heard it at a folk club.

Me too, although not with the orchestra, which is perhaps a crucial factor in my accepting it as folk music in that context. As I've said elsewhere in other contexts it might be something else altogether, but when Folk play Music, in the name of Folk Music, then what else can it be other than Folk Music? This is my Folk as Flotsam theory by the way; anything that floats can be Flotsam - it is defined by context alone. Of course there might be those who insist that only articles accidentally discarded from a ship can be real Flotsam (and that those articles deliberately discarded are Jetsam) but for the purposes of us every day beach-combers, Flotsam is defined simply, and pragmatically, as something from elsewhere that has been fetched up by the sea - be it a fishing float from France, a For Sale sign from the Wirral, or a tree trunk from the Liffey. There is also a generality of understanding here; Folk Musicians and Singers in Folk Clubs and singarounds aren't professionals, they are hearty amateurs, very often non-musicians; non-musos certainly. Therefore much of the charm of actual folk music (its folk character if you will) lies in the evident and entirely corporeal shortfall between intention and result. It lies in the immediacy of its empirical realisation and experience thereof; it can never happen that way again. This is not to justify the GEFF conspiracy, just to recognise that some of us will never amount to anything more than bad pop singers. So - Come-All-Ye!   

Really, it comes down to one question: is it ever possible to listen to someone performing at a folk club or singaround and then say, "that was good but it's not what I'd call folk music"?

If that's the case you must ask yourself (as I have done many the time) why it wasn't folk music? And how it might have been folk music? And by what means a definition of Folk Music (even the 1954 Definition) might be vague enough to allow for the fact that it is, in fact, folk music?

*

This is an epiphany for me; I've emerged out of a crisis of the faith in which I very nearly rejected the whole idea of Folk Music simply because of the impossibility of the 1954 Definition and those who adheer to it. However, when I do THIS, I am doing Folk Music, Feral folk indeed; and in doing so, the folk process continues...

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 10:52 AM

"Hmmmm - Methinks I'll ignore Shimrod's post as being typical of the fundamentalist hysteria I've encountered on this thread thus far..."

Fundamentalist hysteria! Talk about the 'pot calling the kettle black' - I would say that hurling around accusations of 'ethnic cleansing' and 'heretic hunting' is pretty hysterical! In what way was my post more 'hysterical' than yours, SS?

Your last post is a cowardly cop-out (and that is the most 'hysterical that I'm going to get). All of your posts seem to suggest that you possess some sort of moral superiority (not to mention esoteric knowledge) which allows you to summarily dismiss the opinions of others. You remind me of someone from my past whose main fault was that she wasn't very good at arguing. When she was losing an argument she would resort to the underhand tactic of saying, "I find your views to be offensive" - which crumbled all but the toughest of cookies.
Suggesting that the 1954 definition still has a lot going for it is, I insist, not any sort of 'moral failing' (I feel no guilt) but part of a stand against the 'anything goes in a folk club' brigade and their endless whining.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: GUEST, Sminky
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 12:03 PM

Hey, Shimrod. I'm sure we're all eternally grateful to you for your 'stand' against anything new being sung in folk clubs.

Be sure to let us all know if anyone has the temerity to ignore you, now won't you?

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Rifleman (inactive)
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 12:16 PM

Endless whining..? and this from a member of the 1954 Brigade? It'd be laughable if it wasn't so sad. The answer is simpy, if you don't like what's going on the folk clubs, don't go..see how easy it is?

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 12:19 PM

Depressingly, I find myself being able to see both sides of the argument.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: greg stephens
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 12:24 PM

Sinister Supporter: you can, of course, call anything you like folk music, and noone can stop you. And you can see a black and white striped horselike creature walking down the road, and call it a giraffe. Maybe it is, to you. Good luck. But I shall carry on calling it a zebra, because I find it convenient to do so. I have listened to the music you have posted as "folk" or "feral folk". Well, you call it folk. I don't. I can define what I call folk in terms of observable characteristics. Could you list the characteristics by which your posted music is defined as "folk"? Or, indeeed, "feral folk"?

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Banjiman
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 12:25 PM

aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: TheSnail
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 12:26 PM

Spleen Cringe

Depressingly, I find myself being able to see both sides of the argument.

Really? I find myself disagreeing with both of them.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Rifleman (inactive)
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 12:28 PM

This thread courted me
twelve month or better
they fairly won my heart
e-mailed me a letter
with their mouse in their hand,
they look so clever,
and if I could be with my love
I would live forever.

- trad. arr. written 2009

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Sleepy Rosie
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 12:39 PM

Greg Stephens: "I can define what I call folk in terms of observable characteristics."

Not being arsey or anything, but a lot of these discussions become confusing when we are discussing music - and there are no illustrations or examples.

In fact I posted a thread earlier which asked a very similar question (What is 'Folk Character'), though not many people responded. The 1954 definition refers to 'folk character', and similarly there has been mention here of Peter Bellamy's own use of the term 'Folk Idiom'. Yet I'm not sure I personally know what either of these terms actually mean!

So, how would you describe 'observable folk characteristics?'
Or indeed how would anyone else watching this thread for that matter..

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 12:52 PM

"Be sure to let us all know if anyone has the temerity to ignore you, now won't you?"

But they do ignore me - all the time! Sob, sob!!

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Sailor Ron
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 12:54 PM

I am not an accademic nor an ethnmusicologist, I am a lover of what I CALL FOLK MUSIC. What that is, is, at least to me, hard to define, so I'll fall back on a quote I heard many years ago. Q "What does an okapi look like? A. "It's hard to describe, but you'd know it if you saw it". In the same way I know what I regard as folk song when I hear it. As to the 54 definition, I can understand it, and to some degree agree with it, however times move on, and so do definitions [or should do]. I have no argument to the 54 definitiobn if it refers to 'traditional', but to cast songs, and music, composed in the 'folk idiom' into the outer darkness I find unacceptable. Lets face it, some of Kieth Marsden's songs were [are?] thought to be 'trad', Poverty Knock was believed to be, and how many times has John Connelly's Fiddler's Green been credited as {Irish} traditional. To me they are as 'folk' as The Outlandish Knight, not YET traditional but still 'folk'. Of course lots of stuff performed in folk clubs isn't, by any definition folk music [unless you go with the "...never heard a horse...."], and that I regret, but that says more about me that the perf

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: greg stephens
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 01:02 PM

Sleepy Rosie: a couple of the "observable characteristics" of folk music (using the term as a lot of longterm folk enthusiasts do) would be
1) Collectively owned
2) Collectively and successively modified over time.

I appreciate, of course, that a lot of people have totally different definitions of the word (see a million threads and books on the subject). Most of these other defintiions do nothing for me. eg defining stuff as folk because it is "played on folk insruments"(whatever they are), or "because it is played in folk clubs" or "because I like it" or "because I put it on youtube". These are all definitions which have been advocated here, but I find them uninformative and of no use to me. So, I don't use them.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 01:03 PM

Fundamentalist hysteria! Talk about the 'pot calling the kettle black' - I would say that hurling around accusations of 'ethnic cleansing' and 'heretic hunting' is pretty hysterical! In what way was my post more 'hysterical' than yours, SS?

I only mentioned Ethnic Cleansing and Heresy with respect of the cultural fundamentalism that invariably attends the 1954 Definition. Most folkies, it would seem, don't need a definition - it's something they love, and they do it & enjoy it accordingly. It being Folk Music, which, according to the 1954 Fundamentalists, probably isn't folk music at all - like Tommy Armstrong's Marla Hill Ducks, which I'll be singing tonight at the Steamer in Fleetwood.   

Your last post is a cowardly cop-out (and that is the most 'hysterical that I'm going to get).

Accepted. I was just trying to avoid another over long post whilst answering Pip's points with the attention they deserved.

All of your posts seem to suggest that you possess some sort of moral superiority (not to mention esoteric knowledge) which allows you to summarily dismiss the opinions of others.

A somewhat fundamentalist reaction to my particular heresy. I am not possessed of any moral superiority or esoteric knowledge, nor am I dismissing the opinions of others. What I am doing, however, is reporting on what I have seen & heard being done In the Name of Folk over the last 35 years and wondering how this may or may not relate to the 1954 Definition. I've done this by suggesting (and indeed demonstrating) that the 1954 Definition is so nebulous that it might well define any music, and is, therefore, well past its sell-by date. Once can't help but wonder if in changing their name the International Council for Traditional Music feel the same way, and, if so, they are aware of the somewhat cancerous legacy they have left us in the 1954 Definition which no longer fits the facts of Folk but sits as a tumour at its very heart. Benign or not, I think it's time we cut it out.      

You remind me of someone from my past whose main fault was that she wasn't very good at arguing. When she was losing an argument she would resort to the underhand tactic of saying, "I find your views to be offensive" - which crumbled all but the toughest of cookies.

A charming but irrelevant anecdote. I don't find any views to be offensive, and my central point, however so wayward at times in its delivery, is that Folk Music is Empirical rather than Theoretical and that we must, therefore, consider the facts over and above the somewhat antiquated theory.

Suggesting that the 1954 definition still has a lot going for it is, I insist, not any sort of 'moral failing' (I feel no guilt) but part of a stand against the 'anything goes in a folk club' brigade and their endless whining.

In my experience it is the 1954 Faithful who do the most whining; the AGIFC brigade just get on with what they do in the sure knowledge that what they're doing is Folk. They run Folk Clubs, Festivals, Fora, Singarounds, Magazines, Agencies; or else they do that amazing thing which is to actually turn up at Folk Club or singaround and sing a Folk Song, traditional, or otherwise. Like me, tonight, when I'll be singing the Tommy Armstrong song indicated above; in no way traditional (except the tune) but a Folk Song notwithstanding.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 01:03 PM

"Endless whining..? and this from a member of the 1954 Brigade? It'd be laughable if it wasn't so sad. The answer is simpy, if you don't like what's going on the folk clubs, don't go..see how easy it is?"

Reminds me of, "if you don't like it here, go back to where you came from!" Not a very enlightened attitude (now who's got the moral failings?).

Apart from that, I've been going to folk clubs for over 40 years (that's where I come from) and for all of that time there have been people who have wanted to replace the music sung or played there with the latest fads in popular music. I have always resisted those people because I go to folk clubs to hear traditional songs and tunes - if I want to listen to pop music I can get as much as I could possibly need by switching on the radio.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 01:40 PM

if I want to listen to pop music I can get as much as I could possibly need by switching on the radio.

Yeah but, if a Folk Singer sings a pop song in a Folk Club (as my wife does from time to time) then that becomes uniquely folk according the idiosyncratic characteristics of the singer. Dig? Hell, I've got a recording of Seamus Ennis singing Football Crazy, and what about this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXAeL5qe5_o

I have listened to the music you have posted as "folk" or "feral folk". Well, you call it folk. I don't. I can define what I call folk in terms of observable characteristics. Could you list the characteristics by which your posted music is defined as "folk"? Or, indeeed, "feral folk"?

Mostly I call it folk because whilst it is 100% improvised it is nevertheless dependent on the structures, drones, modalities and rhythmic patterns of Indo-European traditional music which are hard-wired into my musical psyche and which must, as a consequence, emerge through the music however so obscure such considerations might first appear. Feral Folk is indicated by the wilderness such a music must, out of necessity, exist in; seeking back to well-springs (what the 1954 Definition calls rudimentary beginnings) of a music whilst at the same time looking forward.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: TheSnail
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 01:47 PM

But is this a folk song and is the singer a folk singer?

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 01:52 PM

Depressingly, I find myself being able to see both sides of the argument.

Even more depressingly, so can I...

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 01:56 PM

But is this a folk song and is the singer a folk singer?

This is an example of the transferability of Traditional Song; even Henry Purcell wasn't above setting traditional songs, and they don't suffer in an way because of it.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Goose Gander
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 01:57 PM

"Yeah but, if a Folk Singer sings a pop song in a Folk Club . . . then that becomes uniquely folk according the idiosyncratic characteristics of the singer."

And if I'm a cabinet maker and I build a table, then that table becomes uniquely a cabinet according to the idiosyncratic characteristics of the cabinet maker(?)

A definition that can encompass just about anything is just about worthless.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 02:07 PM

A definition that can encompass just about anything is just about worthless.

Not if it reflects the reality of what is actually happening in Folk Music. How can that be worthless? I'm not advocating this - I'm telling it like it is!

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Sleepy Rosie
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 02:13 PM

"I call it folk because ... it is ... dependent on the structures, drones, modalities and rhythmic patterns of Indo-European traditional music"

I think an elaboration of *this* kind of answer was rather what I was hoping for when asking 'what is folk character'? Though I think I didn't ask the right question.

Perhaps I'd have been better off asking what are the identifiable *musical characteristics* of 'folk'?

Unfortunately for me to actually make sense of a decent answer in this vein, would probably require a far greater understanding of musical theory than I possess. Not to mention a long sit in a dictionary what has words like ethnomusicology in it...

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Goose Gander
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 02:15 PM

Then maybe you need a different term. Traditional singers (or folk singers, or source singers) often made distinctions between older songs, 'family songs', etc. and newer material (music hall, vaudeville, tin pan alley, pop, etc.). Playing Nirvana on an acoustic guitar in a smokey pub doesn't make it Folk Music, even if you play Cobain's version of 'In the Pines'.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Rifleman (inactive)
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 02:53 PM

In The Pines (Black Girl) is variously described as country blues or blues, which is has been described as the folk music of The U.S.A.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Goose Gander
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 03:02 PM

Yes, I know. There are several threads on the song active right now. But my point should be clear enough.

And of course there are lots of different 'folk musics' in the US, but that's another topic.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Rifleman (inactive)
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 03:12 PM

"Reminds me of, "if you don't like it here, go back to where you came from!" Not a very enlightened attitude (now who's got the moral failings?)."

oops did I just rile up the politically correct. Too bad.*LOL*

I'm not so perfect as to not have "moral failings" (whatever that means)AND please don't equate what I said with the "go back where you came from" mentality. If I don't like something I'm certainly not going to torture myself listening to or watching itover and over, you know, once bitten twice shy and all that sort of stuff?

Michael I understand perfectly what you're saying. Personally I dislike Cobain's version of 'In the Pines, I find it a tad over wrought, but that's neither here nor there

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 03:34 PM

In the Pines??

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Goose Gander
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 03:47 PM

Yeah, 'In the Pines" AKA 'Black Girl' AKA 'The Longest Train' etc.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Don Firth
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 04:09 PM

Here you go.

Don Firth

P. S. I used to do this song (learned from Leadbelly's Folkways recording of it), but got so much static from the PC folks that I dropped it. It seems that, since I am the wrong color, it was "not appropriate" for me to sing it.

Great song! Hearing it again, I may just re-up it and them as don't think I should sing it don't have to listen to me do it.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 04:15 PM

AKA "Where did you sleep last night?"

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Don Firth
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 04:19 PM

Known by various names by various people, but Leadbelly called it "Black Girl." Or so it was listed on his record.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Howard Jones
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 05:12 PM

The question is about trying to define what is and what is not acceptable in a "folk context". That is impossible - it depends on the folk club, the audience and the individual. Where I draw the line is probably different from where you draw it. To make things harder, it can shift according to circumstances - so an established performer of traditional songs throwing in a pop song as a light-hearted encore is more likely to get away with it than an unknown floor-singer who is trying to build his act around it.

I have had some great evenings at folk clubs listening to music which on paper I wouldn't think was "acceptable".

It's simply impossible to define where to draw the line.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: The Sandman
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 05:59 PM

fair play to PEARS, he ploughed on regardless,of the harmonies.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: greg stephens
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 06:10 PM

Are you in the right thread here, Cap'n? There is a discussion of harmonies for trad music elsewhere, were you thinking of that?

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 07:08 PM

It also says that the 100% improvised music I play on folk instruments isn't Folk Music, nor yet is 97% of Kip of the Serenes by Dr Strangely Strange. How is that not a value judgement?

Not to me, it isn't. It would never have occurred to me to call either of those things folk music; I wouldn't have called them Motown, either. As far as I'm concerned, calling something 'folk' isn't a mark of approval, and it isn't anything to do with the quality of the performance. I've seen some gloriously individual, messily exuberant performances of contemporary songs, & some dull and 'professional' performances of traditional songs. So what? There's still a difference between the songs. (On the other hand, I have seen far more dull performances of contemporary songs - some of them seem to be written for a dull performance.) For as many as will is a brilliant LP; some of it's folk, some of it isn't. Rocket cottage is a mediocre LP; some of it's folk, some of it isn't. "Folk" isn't a value judgment.

Individual creativity and vernacular variation are an observable alternative to a theory which in no way can be subjected to any sort of empirical scrutiny.

The theory is based on the reality of individual creativity and vernacular variation - and it can't be observed because it's a theory about things that take a long time to happen.

People copy what they've heard; some of the time they get it wrong, or shift it around a bit, or add an extra bit. Performers have always done this to some extent, just as composers have always borrowed from one another's work to some extent. What's different about the folk process is that lots of people whose names we don't know are doing the copying and the altering - and, more importantly, that the songs get copied again, in those altered forms. And the same processes of individual creativity and vernacular variation happen again. Give it long enough and you end up with Seeds of Love/Let No Man Steal Your Thyme/When I Was In My Prime, and 20-odd versions of Child 10.

Ron:
I have no argument to the 54 definitiobn if it refers to 'traditional', but to cast songs, and music, composed in the 'folk idiom' into the outer darkness I find unacceptable.

Nobody's casting anything into the outer darkness! I'd be overjoyed if I could walk into J. Random Folk Club and hear either folksongs or songs in the general neighbourhood of folk. (Three or four people sang Ewan MacColl songs at the last mostly-trad singaround I went to, and I was one of them.) All I'm saying is that some songs are folk songs (whatever you do to them) and some aren't - and that a folk club where folk songs are the exception, not the rule, should probably call itself something less misleading.

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: The Sandman
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 07:24 PM

Greg, Replying to the Snail

Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
From: kytrad (Jean Ritchie)
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 07:34 PM

Two comments on my singing, in my lifetime, that I treasure: One from Maud Karpeles. We had just met, and she had asked me to illustrate a longago lecture in NYC. She introduced me with: "And here is Jean Ritchie to sing the songs. She cannot be termed a folksinger, because she has been to college."

The other one from Alan Lomax, also to an audience, "Of course it's a folksong, because she's a folk."