Traditional?

Subject: RE: Traditional?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 06:06 AM

She's great, Crowsister. Look for her trio touring this summer - there's also a CD coming out soon.

Subject: RE: Traditional?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 06:04 AM

"a song is traditional not because of where it came from but what happened to it"
There - you've answered your own question.
Anonimity is a tendency rather than a defining factor. The act of being accepted, taken up, transmitted and adapted is what makes it traditional.
Having said that, a knowledge of authorship implies the song going into print, which militates to a great degree against the above happening. James Hogg's mother said it all a couple of centuries ago.
"Please let mine be the last post in this thread."
Please do not be put off by those who obviously have no interest in this subject. There are a number of extremely interesting and inspritional threads going at present on this forum; this has all the makings of being one of them.
Please invite the begrudgers who don't wish to take part to join the 'What key does a toilet flush in?' thread and leave us to ours.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Traditional?
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 06:02 AM

"Have you heard her yet?"

No, I haven't. But if I remember right, she sent me some helpful emails last year when I very first started dabbling in trad. songs.

Otherwise loving Child Owlet.. what piece of work that Lady Erskine is!

Subject: RE: Traditional?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 05:58 AM

Fay Hield did a great Child Owlet at Cheltenham FF yesterday, Crowsister. Have you heard her yet?

Subject: RE: Traditional?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 05:43 AM

A Tradition is the idiom from which any given song is derived. No song ever defines its own idiom, so, therefore, all songs are traditional.

I would disagree, I'm afraid, SOP. A tradition - not just in music, is not defined unless it has persisted across a set period of time. Trees at Christmas, for instance, were not traditional in the UK until well after they were introcudced by Prince Albert. A song is th esame - It cannot be considered traditional until it has become part of the tradition of that culture.

Going back to the Christmas theme, Slade's Christmas song could now be considered part of the Christmas tradition and, therefore, a traditional song in that circumstance. Please note that I am not saying it is folk song - That is an entirely different argument.

To say that all songs are traditional is using the same argument as all songs are folk songs - If you beleive either then it is fine by me, as long as you don't expect me to believe the same.

Cheers

Dave

Subject: RE: Traditional?
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 05:38 AM

"A bit like the Hovis advert then?"

Yeah, just like it! Love all that cosy brown bread, incest, infanticide and blood and gore and stuff (I'm learning Child Owlet & Greenwood Side at the mo')

Subject: RE: Traditional?
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 05:24 AM

"The only Tradition that matters is the one that began when human beings first started making & singing songs. This tradition is alive and well 50,000 years down the line; this tradition is true Folk Music; and, it would seem, it is this tradition that is represented by the International Council of Traditional Music (formerly the International Folk Music Council) the aims which are to further the study, practice, documentation, preservation and dissemination of traditional music, including folk, popular, classical and urban music, and dance of all countries.

So, again, yes; a thousand times yes."


Cripes! Let's put SoP in charge at Cecil Sharply House, IMMEDIATELY! The place may start to liven up a bit then. :0)

Subject: RE: Traditional?
From: GUEST,S O'P (Astray)
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 05:17 AM

They evoke echoes of another world that is now long gone, like folk tales do compared to modern media and publishing.

A bit like the Hovis advert then?

Subject: RE: Traditional?
From: GUEST,S O'P (Astray)
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 05:12 AM

Can a song be called traditional if you know who wrote it?

Yes.

A Tradition is the idiom from which any given song is derived. No song ever defines its own idiom, so, therefore, all songs are traditional. All songs are the products of a tradition - be it Child Ballad #32 or Eat Yourself Fitter by The Fall or In this Trembling Shadow by John Dowland. All songs are the product of a creative process whereby the individual song-writer is drawing on the conventions of an ever evolving collective tradition. By making a song they are contributing directly to that tradition. All music is, therefore, Traditional Music - even F*lk Songs, not because they came about by some supernatural F*lk Process, but because they too were made as part of a traditional idiom by people who understood the craft of that idiom and could make, and re-make, songs accordingly. Amazingly (to Mudcat Pseudo-Traddies) this is still happening - people are still making songs as part of ever-evolving musical traditions. Now isn't that something?

The problem here is that Traddies & Folkies (relatively recent mutations of the human species) obsess over a limited canon of songs & their variants which are known as Traditional Folk Songs not because because of the way they came into being, but because of the way they were hungrily plundered from their natural habitats & made the subjects of an essentially bourgeois psuedo-science (laughing called The Folk Revival) which contaminated the actual traditions it claimed to be representing with its expectations and demands of what Folk Songs must be. Whilst in the Folk World circles ever decreased - and will continue to do so - in the real world, true musical traditions thrive.

The only Tradition that matters is the one that began when human beings first started making & singing songs. This tradition is alive and well 50,000 years down the line; this tradition is true Folk Music; and, it would seem, it is this tradition that is represented by the International Council of Traditional Music (formerly the International Folk Music Council) the aims which are to further the study, practice, documentation, preservation and dissemination of traditional music, including folk, popular, classical and urban music, and dance of all countries.

So, again, yes; a thousand times yes.

S O'P (presently astray)

Subject: RE: Traditional?
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 05:08 AM

I try not to get to involved in such discussions. All I know is that I like learning these really old songs that were around before the industrial revolution changed Western society, and the record industry came along. They evoke echoes of another world that is now long gone, like folk tales do compared to modern media and publishing.

Subject: RE: Traditional?
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 05:04 AM

Ah yes, but......haven't some people smuggled their own songs into the traditional pool, without others knowing..and they've been sung quite happily as 'traditional' songs?

Rules are made to be broken....

Subject: RE: Traditional?
From: Suegorgeous
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 04:59 AM

Bob - ha ha! :)

(Also laughing, though rather mirthlessly, at Bert)

Subject: RE: Traditional?
From: Goose Gander
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 04:25 AM

Dirty Old Town - not folk processed, not traditional.

Norwegian Wood - not folk processed, not traditional.

Anyone who sings either learned it from a recording, or from someone who learned it from a recording. No regional variants that I know of; not that there ever couldn't be, but everyone knows the 'correct' words and tune for each because both are single source songs.

Subject: RE: Traditional?
From: doc.tom
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 04:20 AM

I've always thought 'traditional' was much easier to 'define' than 'folk'. Traditional is what people do with it. You can't separate 'traditional' from its context. Audience expectation - thyat's why a thing can become 'traditional' after only a handful of occasions. (Or, as Terry Pratchett once said in a lecture to the Folklore Society, "I've come to the conclusion that 'traditional' is something you've already done once" - perhaps a little too far!). However:-
Is that particular song traditionally sung in that environment?
It is traditional to put up Christmas trees over Christmas.
It is traditional for the hunt to meet on Boxing Day.
Is Happy Birthday traditionally sung at birthdays?
Is it traditional to sing Flower of Scotland when Scotland playing in the 6 nations (sorry, U.S. - Annual Rugby Football round robin between England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France & Italy)?

Pray the thread doesn't drift into 'folk'!

Tom

Subject: RE: Traditional?
From: Brakn
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 03:59 AM

So Dirty Old Town and Spancil Hill are traditional?

"a song is traditional not because of where it came from but what happened to it"

Norwegian Wood?

Subject: RE: Traditional?
From: michaelr
Date: 14 Feb 10 - 09:00 PM

There are many songs with known authors that have made it into The Tradition, e.g. "Lone Shanakyle", "The Boys of Barr na Sraide", "Down by the Sally Gardens" etc.

Subject: RE: Traditional?
From: Goose Gander
Date: 14 Feb 10 - 08:43 PM

Yes, a song is traditional not because of where it came from but what happened to it. In a thread on the Irish song 'Skibbereen' we found what might be the original version with an author (Patrick Carpenter) listed, but it's still a traditional song.

Subject: RE: Traditional?
From: Bert
Date: 14 Feb 10 - 08:39 PM

Yes. Of course it can.

Try this one

The song it comes from is traditional and it is a long standing tradition to make parodies of songs. So where is this one NOT traditional, and why?

Subject: RE: Traditional?
From: Zimmerman
Date: 14 Feb 10 - 08:38 PM

Dear Mr Offer,

Please let mine be the last post in this thread.
See What I did there? The Last Post?
Let it die - before priceles bandwidth is expended and before the mad witches and trolls cause me and other innocent bystanders to be carted off to the cardiac unit with hearts that have become too heavy.

Subject: RE: Traditional?
From: Brakn
Date: 14 Feb 10 - 08:36 PM

This is a semi-serious question.

If the author is known, I would think it's not traditional.

Subject: RE: Traditional?
From: BobKnight
Date: 14 Feb 10 - 08:30 PM

What if some of the people know who it's by, and some don't. Does that make it semi traditional?

Subject: RE: Traditional?
From: BobKnight
Date: 14 Feb 10 - 08:28 PM

Here we go again.

Subject: RE: Traditional?
From: Jeri
Date: 14 Feb 10 - 08:27 PM

Why not?

Seriously, I'm not just causing trouble. I've often wondered what knowing the author has to do with it.

Subject: RE: Traditional?
From: Suegorgeous
Date: 14 Feb 10 - 08:24 PM

No (in a word).

Subject: Traditional?
From: Brakn
Date: 14 Feb 10 - 08:08 PM

Can a song be called traditional if you know who wrote it?