Art Thieme, Allen C.

Subject: RE: Art Thieme, Allen C.
From: Sandy Paton
Date: 15 Aug 99 - 10:33 PM

Campfire's choice of Greg Brown as an example is very apt. One of Greg's CDs was nominated this year for a Grammy in the (get this!) "TRADITIONAL folk" category! Maybe that means it had no drum track.

Sandy

Subject: RE: Art Thieme, Allen C.
From: T in Oklahoma
Date: 15 Aug 99 - 10:18 PM

The religious war over the definition of "folk" music and "folk" songs resumes every few months in this forum, and it's usually entertaining.

Peter Schickele once did an episode of "Schickele Mix" entitled "Folk music--schmolk music" in which he disputed the question with himself, he, and him.

For those who would rather avoid the quarrel, perhaps a good technique is to distinguish "folk" as a musical idiom (in which case it would be most related to "old-timey" music, but have elements in common with other musical idioms) from "folk" music as a description of how music is used. My favorite definition of the latter kind is: folk music is music that people use while they are doing something else. A shape-note hymn sung as a concert piece to a passive audience is not folk music. The same hymn sung in worship is folk music. If you play a Mozart symphony on your stereo and simply bathe in the music, it is not folk music. If you vacuum your floor while it plays, it is folk music.

Subject: RE: Art Thieme, Allen C.
From: campfire
Date: 15 Aug 99 - 09:13 PM

Hmmm - maybe even I could sing in the "florzeboodle" style! LOL!

campfire

Subject: RE: Art Thieme, Allen C.
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Aug 99 - 09:03 PM

and THEY would call it 'florzeboodle' if it would sell!... Record companies are the used-car dealers of the musical realm!

Subject: RE: Art Thieme, Allen C.
From: campfire
Date: 15 Aug 99 - 08:49 PM

Bill D - "contemporary acoustic" IS the term I use, as do most of my singer/songwriter friends, to describe what they do. Unfortunately, not too many record stores or even radio stations use the term, and therefore Greg Brown is sold in the "FOLK" bin. Most of my friends don't like it any more than you do - for opposite reasons. You may not want to accidently pick up a singer/songwriter tape; they want people to KNOW that they write and perform their OWN music.

I guess we just gotta work on the record companies...

campfire

Subject: RE: Art Thieme, Allen C.
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Aug 99 - 08:42 PM

BTW. joely, in regard to:

The point is, folk music is a catagory of music. It's not how old it is."...I actually tend to agree..but I have a LONG list of tests to apply to music beyond the age thing...There are some songs in the database by one Craig Johnson, which you'd SWEAR were old, it you didn't know better...he just wrote stuff with that 'feel'...

try working backwards...take some songs that almost anyone who has any knowlege of the genre' would call 'folk'...undisputed folk songs..now, make some lists of what they have in common...WHY did they get called 'folk' in the first place? ..you get certain tune styles, subject matter, cultural attitudes, modes of transmission, status of the composer(s), whether the composer is known, etc., etc..LOTS of things..it's like deciding whether a society is democratic or not...it is NOT a short list, and a number of countries call themselves 'democratic', that we might just not agree about..so...*shrug*

Subject: RE: Art Thieme, Allen C.
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Aug 99 - 08:06 PM

well! joely..I didn't realize this thread was related till just now, as my name was not included!.I just survived a bitter racking on the original thread by someone defending you..and I wrote as how I bet you'd survive just fine! I'm glad to see you are perfectly capable of defending yourself!

Yep, there IS a big differnce of opinion about definitions....it should never make any difference to those writing music...they write what the know and feel, and truly LIKE some newer song..(sing some, too)..little things like this are why we now often use 'traditional' instead of 'folk' to describe older songs of a different style and ummm...'feel'...but even that does not suffice any more, as there seems to be a philosophical position that holds that it is ok for the definition to change as people write different stuff...I and others (some more adamant than I), feel that it behooves those who create new styles shoud find new terms to describe it. (Of course, I have not heard yours, so I have NO idea what I'd call it).

This discussion is not new, nor is it confined to folk music...Bluegrass musicians can get REALLY grumpy at some of the "newgrass" stuff...and Doc Watson was practically disowned by some when he allowed electric bass on stage!

I have my opinion, others have theirs..the management is pretty tolerant..*grin*..and it IS his place. I still like 'mostly' older, traditional music, and I sure do like what I find in the bin at the record store bin, or onstage at the club, to sound like what I want....if you, or anyone else changes the MUSIC, and demands to use the NAME I am used to, it makes it hard for me, and I get grumpy...some of us just don't LIKE constant change...in MY world, you would have to wait 30-50 years to see IF what you do iiis adopted as 'folk' by that community..(it is easier for antiques and 'classic' cars...they have official rules/definitions about what fits under the title!)

It would suit me if there was a category called "contemporary acoustic" or something to tell others that it is NOT 'that old stuff'...but 'folk' is SUCH a neat, tidy word..I suspect I have lost it as a descriptive term

ah, well....as long as you take no serious offense at my defence of my icons..*shrug*...(and, perhaps I would like some of your music...)

Subject: RE: Art Thieme, Allen C.
From: Sandy Paton
Date: 15 Aug 99 - 07:23 PM

Let's get Joely to give us the working definition under which these songs have been self-designated "folk." When a term has lost its accepted meaning, it must be re-defined each time it is used. That is very awkward and time-consuming, which is why languages make use of accepted definitions. It's so much more convenient for communicating. However, the term "folksong" has recently been applied to such a wide variety of songs that it has become essentially meaningless. The old saw, generally attributed to Big Bill Broonzy by folkies, but to Louie Armstrong by the quotation dictionaries, that "it must be a folksong; I never heard a horse sing it," is silly. No one ever heard a horse sing an aria from an opera, either, but that doesn't mean that arias are all "folksongs."

All this is simply to ask Joely for a personal definition of the term as it is being applied here. That way, we can at least have an idea of what we're talking about.

Sandy

Subject: RE: Art Thieme, Allen C.
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 15 Aug 99 - 07:11 PM

I just wrote, and the machine ate, the most heated post I ever made. Perhaps it is as well. Please, please, go and read the definition and remember that all it does is set out the tests for deciding if something is or is not within the category "folk music". If you want a definition for something else, go away and write one. DOn't try to hijack the existing one.

This is not intended to imply that any form of music is better than any other. It just expresses my fury at people who refuse to answer the question asked, rather than one they would prefer to have been asked.

Subject: RE: Art Thieme, Allen C.
From: teller
Date: 15 Aug 99 - 06:54 PM

The various and varying definitions of what people call 'Folk' music is something that will, no doubt, be discussed, argued about and generally tossed back and forth for a long long time to come, BUT.....I offer my own pennorth worth, for what it's worth. Traditional folk music, I feel, was something that was used to record....well, anything you care to mention really: events, comment, love songs etc etc. For instance: in the village where I currently live, there was an 'event', over an hundred and fifty years ago that, as far as I have been able to discover, was never actually 'recorded' in song. Basically, two thirds of the entire town was burnt down after somebody got careless in a local bakers. Now, I've checked around, as much as I was able to, talking with local historians, reading eye-witness accounts and generally researching the incident, and drew a large blank. Some may call it presumptious, but I decided it was about time that the 'Great Fire of Chudleigh' was recorded, in song. So I wrote it. It's a folk song, in the 'traditional' style, recording a momentous event in our local history. I sang it at the club, in front of six or so 'purists', who were our guests that night, and received a favourable response. It may never become accepted as such, but I feel it IS a folk song, even though it's new and ( as yet ) 'unaccepted'. It's a song about the people, for the memory of the people who went through that time, to remind the people who are around today about a little of what makes the place where they live the place it is. Does that make sense ? Well, it does to me. And I think it's a folk song - so there !!! Teller.

Subject: RE: Art Thieme, Allen C.
From: bob schwarer
Date: 15 Aug 99 - 06:36 PM

When the "folk" embrace it, it will be "folk" music.

Bob S.

Subject: RE: Art Thieme, Allen C.
From: SueH
Date: 15 Aug 99 - 06:33 PM

yes, this was why I was careful, in my thread about Jeri's tunes, to say that they (& a couple of others on the CD) were contemporary tunes written in the traditional manner!

They're not Celtic songs, are they joely?

Sue

Subject: RE: Art Thieme, Allen C.
From: bseed(charleskratz)
Date: 15 Aug 99 - 06:25 PM

Joely, we have this argument every once in a while, but most of us agree (most of us living in my house, anyway) that there are people writing music in one of the many folk idioms, expressing the concerns of "the folk," and this music is distinctive from classical and jazz and pop and country/western, but has great areas of overlap (with the other idioms perhaps more likely to "borrow" from folk than the other way around, and these musicians are folk musicians thus what they write is folk music. Whether it will live long enough to become "traditional music" or not, that is the question.

I'd love to hear your songs. My eMail is [e-mail]. --seed

Subject: RE: Art Thieme, Allen C.
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 15 Aug 99 - 06:16 PM

"Madonna? Chippendale, Turnips, Old potatoes, New potatoes, sardines, hay, Mozart"? Oh god, how I LOVE the "Mudcat"! And all in one thread!
Rick (positively discombobulated!)

Subject: RE: Art Thieme, Allen C.
From: joeler
Date: 15 Aug 99 - 06:10 PM

If someone writes a symphony today, does it have to wait a certain amount of time before it can be catagorized as "classical?" If someone writes a country and western song does it have to wait a certain amount of time before it can become a country and western song? I could go on and on. The point is, folk music is a catagory of music. It's not how old it is. If this is the case, Mozart's music is all folk music, not classical.

Subject: RE: Art Thieme, Allen C.
From: bob schwarer
Date: 15 Aug 99 - 05:04 PM

We use live "sardines" for bait. Figure that one. It's only a name with a pretty loose definition.

Bob S.

Subject: RE: Art Thieme, Allan C.
From: Allan C.
Date: 15 Aug 99 - 04:48 PM

I am actually a lot broader in my definition of folk music than a lot of others. Generally, my own feeling is that a song doesn't qualify to be called by that name until it has been around for quite some time. To me, the use of the term is not unlike things such as sardines or hay. There is no such thing as a living sardine. It is only a sardine when it is in the can. Hay never grows. Once the grasses are cut and dried, they become hay. For me, (and I say this LOUDLY!) FOR ME folk songs aren't folk songs until they have some age on them. One of my favorite quotes came from an elderly gentleman who, speaking of folk music, said "When I was coming up, we just called it music." I don't mean to offend you, Joely. The thread title just hit me as being wrong IN MY VIEW. I am always glad to listen to the efforts of other performers. Best of luck.

Subject: RE: Art Thieme, Allen C.
From: Llanfair
Date: 15 Aug 99 - 04:01 PM

Just a minute, what's happening here? Are we getting precious about definitions of the kind of music we like? How do we categorize "Streets of London" "Four Strong Winds" or Steeleye's "All around my Hat" which is a compilation of at least two traditional songs. Be pedantic about traditional folk, but surely not folk music, music of the people,by the people. I'd like to hear your tape, joely, can it be shipped to the UK? Hwyl, Bron.

Subject: RE: Art Thieme, Allen C.
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 15 Aug 99 - 03:44 PM

It is not a matter of refusing to hear new songs. It is merely a matter of being accurate in not referring to them as "folk songs". You might as well call potatoes turnips. AFter all, lots of people once ate turnips and along came this new root vegetable. Why bother to give it a name different from the established term "turnips"?

There has been posted to another thread the correct definition of "folk song". As noted there, that's the definition. End of story.

Subject: Art Thieme, Allen C.
From: joeler
Date: 15 Aug 99 - 03:39 PM

Gentlemen: Your sarcasim was taken in good fun. As for new folksongs, even Greensleeves was "NEW" once. So was Chippendale furniture. All kidding aside, if someone writes a folksong why can't it be called a new folksong, or am I discussing this with a couple of purists who can't seem to accept the fact that great music is composed everyday by all kinds of people? Gee, maybe I'm talking to a couple of professionel critics. If this is the case have fun with your little dittys. If this is the way you get your jollys, make sure they are not "new Jollys." I only want old jollys. No Madonnas or chippendales needed on this computer. Joel