Traditional singer definition

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 10:44 AM

Let's keep things simple, eh? We're All Revivalists Now! Unless of course there's someone out there still singing this stuff in all innocence of Folk, yet to be discovered; Yeti-like, hiding away in dread of discovery. Be a Traddy if you may, but the last thing you'll ever be is a Traditional Singer...

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: reynard
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 10:33 AM

The distiction between traditional singer and "revivalist" was useful back in the sixties or earlier when there were quite a few "traditional singers" still around. Today it's mainly the guys who sing in folk clubs and draw upon the accumulated heritage of tradition who can and should be described as the tradition. There is no strict definition which can distinguish these people from the older tradition and therefore no distinction to be made. It's time to claim the name for ourselves; we are now the traditional singers, we are the tradition.

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: Richard from Liverpool
Date: 18 Jul 11 - 07:27 AM

There's a fatal flaw in your description, Desi C. If they're having to tune anything up, then it's not trad.

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: GUEST,Desi C
Date: 18 Jul 11 - 07:25 AM

If you're talking English trad. Well they're very east to spot. They're the ones that take ten minutes to tune up before each song, songs which are normally ten minutes longer than normal and where half the Audience are eyeing their watches anxiosly, while the other half are nodding their heads pretending they understand the story. Hope that helps ;)

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 18 Jul 11 - 02:01 AM

I just read through this entire thread. Some very complicated points being made.

You couldn't actually formulate a set of rules out of all the differing points of view. I sort of veered from one view to another. Very persuasive some of you are.   I don't know who is right.

You find youself thinking - well at least we're not terrorists wanting to blow things up - we all want to sing.

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 18 Jul 11 - 01:19 AM

Never mind. Seems I misread Stringsinger's post.

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 18 Jul 11 - 01:03 AM

And as to Stringsinger's comment that "they do not necessary have to be of the culture from which the tradition emanates" does that mean you would accept someone immersed in another culture's national tradition as a traditional performer?

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 18 Jul 11 - 12:00 AM

There are different definitions of "traditional singer", depending on which tradition you are talking about. If you are talking about English/Irish/Welsh, a traditional singer is someone who learned songs within their own community or within their family or family friends. Other cultural traditions don't have that distinction. In calypso, as far as far as I know (rhymes!) a traditional calypsonian is someone who can improvise verses, 'rhyme extemporaneously" in the words of the Lord Invader. Sometimes they use tunes from other songs to compose their own topical songs. That is the difference between Harry Belafonte and a traditional calypsonian.

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: GUEST,padgett
Date: 09 Sep 10 - 03:07 AM

I'm not sure who that one is aimed at my Good Soldier, but this thread has certainly attracted some interest

Re Tom McCarthy, I heard him at Whitby last year (never caught him this year)

He told me that the songs he sings are from his family and I did hear him sing The Nobleman's Wedding (see also Eddie Butcher)different tune!

Where one note would suffice for mere mortals, he must have had three!

Very interesting style

Ray

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: The Sandman
Date: 08 Sep 10 - 05:33 PM

I thought I had a Eureka moment last night, or maybe a bad pint!quote ray badgett. i reckon you had a bad nipperkin

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: GUEST,Brian Peters
Date: 08 Sep 10 - 04:32 PM

Jim Carroll: "I was pulled up a little short this afternoon when I played a recording of a programme on Traveller songs (The Blue Tar Road) and heard some superb singing, including from a couple of very skilful young Traveller women, all recorded in the last six months."

Have you come across Thomas McCarthy (a young relative of Mikeen) yet, Jim? I think he might stop you in your tracks as well!

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Sep 10 - 01:32 PM

You are right that fragments are important for researchers, but they have proved invaluable to singers in supplying tunes for texts only from print, or having indifferent ones, or for collating incomplete texts.
Occasionally they will give you something that has disappeared from the tradition altogether.
I always think it is unwise to divide song enthusiasts into reasearchers and singers; the implication is that either is not interested in doing the other, or both.
One of the invaluable ways into a song for a singer is to lift the corner and take a peep at what's underneath.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: Lighter
Date: 08 Sep 10 - 01:11 PM

A "fragment" to a scholar may be a satisfying - or at least curious -complete song to a singer. It all depends on how much the singer knows is missing and how much he's ready to read into what's left.

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Sep 10 - 11:16 AM

From the beginning of the 20th century, singers have been remembering (or not) for collectors. Any collector worth his or her salt has taken down what they were given, complete or not. If they are part of the standard repertoire and it is obvious that a large chunk of the story is missing, it is self evident that this is a fragment, or at tha very least, incomplete, as distinct from one that has been deleberately remade or adapted in some way.
Neither authenticity nor rejection should come into it.
We recorded four verses of Lord Gregory from a Travelling woman, an extreme rarety that we were delighd to get - it would have been nice to get the whole version, but a gem in our collection just the same.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: mattkeen
Date: 08 Sep 10 - 09:24 AM

No

As an example: I am talking about a late tradition singer perhaps mis remembering etc and the results being rejected by the collectors as less authentic

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Sep 10 - 08:18 AM

"Its the use of "garbled sing alongs" that I was intimating IS part of the folk process"
Why?
If the Albert hall mob sang "Hope of Land and Glory", would that be part of the folk process - if not, why not? It just seems like making a balls of the words, which can happen in any genre, from Grand Opera to Gilbert and Sullivan.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: mattkeen
Date: 08 Sep 10 - 05:58 AM

Its the use of "garbled sing alongs" that I was intimating IS part of the folk process
Often the discussions seem to dismiss what has happened since oral transmission has ceased to be the major way that songs are passed on. I recognise that there is a difference pre and post the decline/stop of oral transmission.

There is often a feeling that "post" oral transmission is some how lesser or "folk Lite"

I dont think it is - its more difficult to follow and changes more quickly mind you

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: GUEST,padgett
Date: 08 Sep 10 - 05:26 AM

Songs continue to be written

Tunes are often used from existing songs!

I have just been looking at the Battle of Sowerby Bridge and whistled the chorus!

Go on everyone ~ "we were amongst 'em we were amongst 'em"

Now how close is that to the theme tune of "The Great Escape"

Well!!

Ray

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Sep 10 - 08:26 AM

"I would like to know why what that proces is deemed as NOT part of the folk process?"
It is part of the folk process, but if Sharp and the rest were right, by the time he and his contemporaries got to them the process was in decline so it was deteriorating rather than developing.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: GUEST,Steamin' Willie
Date: 07 Sep 10 - 08:17 AM

Here's a song I collected.

I collected it from an album called The Carthy Chronicles.

QED

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: mattkeen
Date: 06 Sep 10 - 11:52 AM

Sharp described as "The twentieth century collector is a hundred years too late." The reason was that many of the songs he was collecting were not the originals, but the garbled singalong versions peddled by the broadside sellers of the nineteenth century."

I would like to know why what that proces is deemed as NOT part of the folk process?

I recognise it is different to what may have happened for perhaps several centuries before but why is it not part of the folk process?
PS I dont believe that the folk process is just oral tramsmission

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Sep 10 - 02:41 PM

"Jim: I don't want to get into an impasse over the football chant thing,"
Me neither; as you say, no great difference between our attitudes.
For me, it is only important if it is used as an argument that these are no different from the recognised song tradition and that everyone who's ever peed through a rolled up newspaper on the terraces is a traditional singer - hate to see 'traditional' go down the same pan as 'folk' appears to have done.
There should be no problem in defining our song traditions; god knows, our music is among the most researched, documented and debated of any. At the risk of my being included in somebody's 'non-discerning' books it seems to me that once you know what the tradition is, identifying traditional singers should logically follow.
I believe we have lost most of our song traditions and that all of the features that held it in place have now gone, though I must say I was pulled up a little short this afternoon when I played a recording of a programme on Traveller songs (The Blue Tar Road) and heard some superb singing, including from a couple of very skilful young Traveller women, all recorded in the last six months.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: GUEST,Glueman in XL5
Date: 05 Sep 10 - 02:02 PM

"I would say that football songs are traditional in a way that 'Little Boxes' never was and never will be, simply because of their context and transmission."

If there remains a gushing wellspring of spontaneous voice to expedient conditions, it is surely the football song. It meets any and all definitions of 'folk', save the one that demands it sounds like every other revival piece and is performed in a pub by those estranged from barber and tailor.

I've heard sung commentaries on politics, fashion, the north-south divide, television, gender as well as the ability of footballers, organic blossoms of wit borrowing tunes from where they may. Traditions are being forged week on week.

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: GUEST,Brian Peters
Date: 04 Sep 10 - 07:39 PM

Jim: I don't want to get into an impasse over the football chant thing, since we don't disagree on the substance, but regarding the Bert Lloyd quote (well put though it is), I would say that football songs are traditional in a way that 'Little Boxes' never was and never will be, simply because of their context and transmission. Although some of them are tuneless and banal to the point of deliberate self-parody - ten thousand soaked United fans on the Gallowgate End at Newcastle once set up a chant of 'WE HATE WATER!' - some of them run to several verses and have good tunes, albeit stolen from elsewhere.

"I wonder if kids are still re-making songs as they once did with The Cruel Mother and Lord Randal - anybody know?"

I doubt if they're still remaking Child ballads, but when my son (now 17) was in primary school, the playground tradition was still going strong. The 'Teletubbies' song - to the tune of 'Nick Nack Paddy Whack' - still makes me laugh.

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 04 Sep 10 - 04:21 PM

Spotted today in Fylde Festival Souvenir Programme: Ash Street Chippy - Traditional Fish & Chips for Traditional Folk. My mind boggles at the semantics!

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: Lighter
Date: 04 Sep 10 - 03:14 PM

Carpenter collected a few obscene shanty verses, not entire shanties, but the number is probably about a dozen - at the outside.

Stan Hugill wrote (and told me in person) that he'd collected a lot more, but it appears that almost all of those verses and shanties are now lost forever.

Hugill was prevailed upon to sing three or four "unprintable" shanties at the Mystic Sea Music Festival in 1988. By today's successful gangsta rap standards, the words ranged from the childishly naughty to the slightly more graphic than average.

They had a strongly misogynist streak. That was "the tradition's" fault, not Hugill's, and the audience (of all genders and all ages over 18) applauded wildly at the conclusion. The following year he declined to sing any more bawdy songs because the mixed audience made him uncomfortable.

A very "traditional singer," though in a very untraditional venue.

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Sep 10 - 12:34 PM

"Sharp, of course, did his own editing and bowdlerising"
This is true of all the collectors of the time, who were hampered by Victorian convention; but even taking this into consideration, and the fact that some collectors kept copies of originals, I think we were left with enough of a picture to work on.
Later collectors who were not bound by such restrictions have added to the original store (I seem to remember reading that J M Carpenter collected a number of obscene shanties, for instance).
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: theleveller
Date: 04 Sep 10 - 11:18 AM

"Sharp argued that it was dying among the singers he was working with at the turn of the century"

Sharp said: "The twentieth century collector is a hundred years too late." The reason was that many of the songs he was collecting were not the originals, but the garbled singalong versions peddled by the broadside sellers of the nineteenth century.

Sharp, of course, did his own editing and bowdlerising - "The folk song editor has perforce to undertake the distateful task of modifying noble and beautiful sentiments in order that they may suit the minds and conform to he conventions of another age, where such things would not be understood in the primitive, direct and healthy sense."

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: mikesamwild
Date: 04 Sep 10 - 07:38 AM

Tow of my sons and their pals are rapping and making songs all the time . A lot is superb, improvised and poetic. For now they have left traditional music to one side but they do draw on what they heard and enjoyed of it as youngsters

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: Liberty Boy
Date: 04 Sep 10 - 02:54 AM

I very much doubt it Jim, too busy with gameboy and things of that ilk.

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Sep 10 - 07:10 PM

"but they are a singing tradition."
This is true Brian - the operative word being A rather THE singing tradition (if you count them as singing, that is - many are tuneless chants).
I think it is as Bert Lloyd said at the end of Folk Song in England (will have to paraphrase at this hour of night) "If The Red Flag" and 'Little Boxes" are folksongs, then we will have to find a new name for "As I Roved Out" and "Banks of Sweet Primroses" (wildly inaccurate examples).
The context, function, disciplines, styles, relationships to the singers, etc, are entirely different to the body of song that we have, up to now, referred to as traditional song.
You have made the point that we don't necessarily want to sit through 'Happy Birthday To You' or 'You'll Never Walk Alone' in our clubs; so where do they lie in our understanding of traditional songs?
In the field of research, they surely lie more within the scope of custom or ritual, rather than alongside the creative observation that has gone into the making of our traditional songs?
The childrens' songs, I believe are a litle more complicated, dividing themselves into two distinct sections, funnctional - ball-bouncing, skipping, etc, and parodies. I wonder if kids are still re-making songs as they once did with The Cruel Mother and Lord Randal - anybody know?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: Brian Peters
Date: 03 Sep 10 - 08:12 AM

"if I learned "Little Musgrave" from my father, and he learned it from his father I am a traditional singer. If I learned it fron a book last week I am a traditionalist singer. It is the same song and the same singer, who will be able to tell the difference?"

No-one, purely on the basis of listening to you. But Ray started this thread because he wanted to know what to call himself, as a singer of traditional songs who maintains a distinction between what he does (very well, as it happens) and what singers like Walter Pardon and Cyril Poacher, who learned songs through their families or local communities, did. Like Ray, I think that's a useful distinction to make, although personally I'm not too bothered about what label I might stick on myself. 'Tradition Bearer' isn't bad, though perhaps a bit grandiose; 'Traditionalist' is a decent attempt at a compromise.

Jim wrote (re football chants): "At their most developed they are little more than crude parodies of something else, at their most common they are little more than chants. They are deserving of a study on their own, but as a custom rather than as part of the song tradition."

All of that is true. However, if we look at the world around us (this country, at least) for evidence of continuing singing traditions, then football chants are a living, breathing example. So too are playground rhymes. They are not 'part of the song tradition' that includes all those old ballads and 18th century lyrical songs (which is largely gone now as a living tradition), but they are a singing tradition. That's all I was trying to say.

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: The Sandman
Date: 03 Sep 10 - 08:05 AM

which brings us back to bobblake a revivalist singer who was mistaken by mike yates for being a traditional singer, however he was agood singer who sang in an accepted style[and so inadvertently misled a colector, because musically they could not tell the difference and that is all that should matter.

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: The Sandman
Date: 03 Sep 10 - 08:03 AM

nobody.
that is why any sensible person makes musical judgements on merit, and why these definitions are only of importance to collectors. when i judge traditional singers i judge them on merit, i rate Phil Tanner , and Harry Cox, I also judge singers of traditional songs on the same basis, their music, their interpretation of the song their voice and their musicality.

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: GUEST,johnp
Date: 03 Sep 10 - 07:45 AM

if I learned "Little Musgrave" from my father, and he learned it from his father I am a traditional singer. If I learned it fron a book last week I am a traditionalist singer. It is the same song and the same singer, who will be able to tell the difference?

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: The Sandman
Date: 02 Sep 10 - 07:10 PM

shimrod, you are both right and wrong, what is happening at your local singaround is encouraging, because singers are singing the songs and realising that they are everybodies songs not just a version sung by joe bloggs or seth lakeman or some other star,
mean while there are still people who think the white cockade is a "show of hands" song . the most important thing is that the somgs are sung and that every person puts their own individual interpretation upon them.
let us take Steve Turner and Dick Miles, two singers who sing traditional songs with a concertina, yet both instantly recognisable and completely different, and that is how it should be.

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 02 Sep 10 - 06:29 PM

I'm not saying you're wrong, Ray. Nevertheless, as someone who experienced the Post-war Revival this (if 'this' even exists outside my local singaround, of course!) feels a bit new and a bit different.

It seems to me that the P-w R came to be dominated by a few professional 'stars' - and far too many 'lesser' singers came to sound like them. At some stage, in some circles, 'Folk' became a sort of sub-set of 'Pop' dominated by 'stars' and personalities. I think that's why people start threads on here with titles like "Fred Blogg's Lord Bateman" - as though they think that 'Fred Blogg's' actually wrote Lord Bateman and that it did not exist until 'Fred Bloggs' recorded it.

What happens now in my local singaround just feels fresher and more 'homemade' than that - and less influenced by the 'stars' of the P-w R. I wonder if someone else, somewhere else, is experiencing something similar? Could the art of singing traditional songs be entering a new phase - or am I just imagining it?

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: r.padgett
Date: 02 Sep 10 - 05:08 PM

They are in my view "traditionalist" singers

Not traditional singers, not source singers

They are "reviving" the traditional songs, but can never be "traditional singers"

Ray

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 02 Sep 10 - 08:01 AM

Something a bit uncanny and, slightly unsettling, happened the other night at our local singaround. A young woman, who must have only been in her 20s, sang 'Maria Marten and the Red Barn' - and she sang it so well and with such style that the hair literally stood up on the back of my neck! My Grandmother, who didn't sing, but was born in East Anglia in the 1880s, used to talk about the infamous murder in the Red Barn (which had happened several decades before she was born).

Now, of course, the singer in question had probably learned the song from Revival sources. But she and her partner seem to have recently discovered traditional songs and are doing a really good job of singing them - they have great taste, not only because of their choices of songs, but because they are not 'tape recorders' just mimicking their favourite singers.

So where am I going with this? I don't really know but our singaround is packed for every session and there definitely seems to be more younger singers, singing traditional songs, than there used to be a few years ago. Of course I can't extrapolate from one singaround but is there something going on at the moment? And, if there is, I wonder what relation it bears to the Old Tradition and to the Post-war Revival?

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: The Sandman
Date: 02 Sep 10 - 05:53 AM

I think the notts county song, I had a wheel barrow but the wheel fell off,[on top of old smokey tune] is a good one, in ten words, all the difficulties of being a lower league team are summed up.
apparently the wheel barrow that was used to sell the meat pies lost its wheel one day at a home match.so the team was so hard up it could nt afford a decent wheel barrow.
so are all those notts county fans traditional singers?

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Sep 10 - 05:14 AM

"If Fred had sung Fields of Athenry he would have been a traditional singer singing a contemporary song written in the "traditionalist" style"
At the risk of encouraging this silliness - hear, hear.
Cap'n
I spent all my life as a working electrician. Very occasionally (and much against my better judgement) I allowed myself to be persuaded to carry out a bit of plumbing or carpentry for one of my customers. Then I became an electrician doing a bit of plumbing or carpentry work - at no time did I cease being an electrician and become another tradesman. Had anybody described me as either a carpenter or a plumber, I would have sued them for defamation of character.
Silliness over.
Lighter:
Of course you are right – my response was an ill thought out statement made during a brief break in my Triffid-fighting campaign.
I believe a traditional singer to be someone who has learned their songs as part of a living tradition; not just one who has received them by the oral process. When and if the song tradition died is a debate yet to be settled. Sharp argued that it was dying among the singers he was working with at the turn of the century; Sam Larner put it some time in the 1930s, Walter Pardon about the same. Walter only just remembered the last of the harvest suppers where his family's songs were sung, and by the time he became interested they were just aired at family Christmas parties and other get-togethers.
So, for me, the song tradition in England seems to have died at different times in different places.
By the time the BBC mounted its mopping up campaign in the 1950s singers were remembering songs rather than singing them as part of their present lives.
MacColl made a series of ten radio programmes on the tradition in the middle of the 1960s which he entitled 'The Song Carriers'. I'm not sure whether or not he chose the title deliberately, but it's always struck me as an excellent description of those singers who continued to remember and occasionally sing the songs without being part of a living tradition.
For revival singers, the title of the series of albums chosen by The Living Tradition magazine for its excellent series of revival singers, 'The Tradition Bearers' is a title that I would have been proud to wear when I was singing.
As far as the football chants - I'm a little sorry I raised the red-herring of 'You'll Never Walk Alone'; on the other hand, it did push me into thinking about something I haven't really thought through, while I was hacking away in the garden. These songs (sic) are, of course a tradition in themselves, but I don't believe them to be part of the main song tradition; rather they are akin to tribal war-chants. In the main, they are not particularly creative as our folk songs are; they tell me nothing of the subject they deal with, as our folk songs do; rather (apart from I love Liverpool, Everton (wash your mouth out Jim) whoever, and I hate Chelsea, Manchester U., etc. At their most developed they are little more than crude parodies of something else, at their most common they are little more than chants. They are deserving of a study on their own, but as a custom rather than as part of the song tradition.
Again, I find myself totally in agreement with Howard Jones on the subject of family songs.
More later, duty calls; Triffid banging on the window waiting to be fed.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: Liberty Boy
Date: 02 Sep 10 - 04:17 AM

Fred was a traditional singer no matter what he sang. As was John Reilly, Tom Lenihan, Corny McDaid et al.

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: Howard Jones
Date: 02 Sep 10 - 03:42 AM

To restrict "traditional" singers to only songs they learned from their family is far too narrow imo. It completely ignores the social context that "the tradition" was part of, where people sang to their friends and local community, whether in their homes, workplaces, or in the local pub, and learned songs from each other. To distinguish between a song learned from a relative and a neighbour, in this social context, seems to me to be immaterial.

If Fred Jordan (as we keep using him as an example) learned a song from May Bradley, for example, so far as I am concerned that is part of what I think of as "the tradition".

Fred was not a "revivalist" singer because his roots were not in the revival, although he later came to perform in the revival and even learned some songs from it. In the same way, because my own roots are in the revival, I can never be a "traditional" singer, even when singing songs I may have learned from Fred.

I find the most useful label is to think of Fred as a traditional singer, albeit one with a wide repertoire gleaned from many sources. It is helpful to be aware of his wider musical experience outside his own local tradition, but it doesn't alter his main "label". To "relabel" him for every song he sang doesn't seem to me to be a useful exercise. However we are clearly going to have to disagree on this.

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: GUEST,padgett
Date: 02 Sep 10 - 03:19 AM

If Fred had sung Fields of Athenry he would have been a traditional singer singing a contemporary song written in the "traditionalist" style

Ray

Fred was a traditional or source singer and will continue to be viewd in that light, no matter what he sung jazz or whatever

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: Lighter
Date: 01 Sep 10 - 05:29 PM

No, Jim. It would only make them traditional singers if, in addition to their operatic performances, they sang traditional songs, learned orally, in a traditional style. Like any other traditional singer.

The fallacy lies in assuming that the label "traditional singer" is comprehensive. It isn't. Around here it's shorthand for "a singer (of at least one traditionally learned song that he or she performs in a traditional manner) *whose material or style interests us.*" Any traditional singer (however defined) is allowed to sing nontraditional songs as well. Those songs don't count, they just don't interest us, or they interest us for very different reasons.

One could confine the label to someone who sang nothing but traditional songs in a traditional manner, but that's pointless because such a person would be an *interesting* traditional singer anyway.

At this point I'll restate my conviction that the label is convenient but secondary to the specifics of the singer,the song, and the context.

McCormack and the others are out of the running if the only traditional songs they sing have been learned from print and are performed in a nontraditional style. If the only traditional song they sing in a traditional style is "Happy Birthday," then, to that extent *only,* they're traditional singers. Just very, very uninteresting ones, not the interesting kind that one would discuss. They're at the opposite end of the spectrum from the hypothetical *most* interesting traditional singer.

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: The Sandman
Date: 01 Sep 10 - 03:26 PM

hobgoblins are consistent in their small mindedness.

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: Goose Gander
Date: 01 Sep 10 - 02:15 PM

Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: raymond greenoaken
Date: 01 Sep 10 - 01:45 PM

"i became different singers not in a physical sense but I became a singer with a different label?definition, because of the s different songs i was singing.Ihappen to be versatile"

I hereby declare Dick the winner of this argument. Nobody's going to top that line...

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: The Sandman
Date: 01 Sep 10 - 12:23 PM

Raymond, But correct to describe him as someone who used to be a tradtional singer.in the same way CyrilTwaney used to be a singer songwriter, he is not any more because sadly he died.
goose gander, i became different singers not in a physical sense but I became a singer with a different label?definition, because of the s different songs i was singing.Ihappen to be versatile
this not so extraordinary, Rev Gary Davis was a gospel singer, he was also a blues singer,but he was only a gospel singer when he was singing gospel songs as soon as he sung a blues he was a blues singer,being a religuos man he differentiated between gospel and blues

Subject: RE: Traditional singer definition
From: Goose Gander
Date: 01 Sep 10 - 12:09 PM

" . . . so on different occasions during the night I BECAME DIFFERENT SINGERS . . . ."

I am somehow reminded of the Hare Krishna devotee who once told me that change bodies every seven years.