No, really -- what IS NOT folk music?

Subject: RE: No, really -- what IS NOT folk music?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 19 Oct 10 - 03:29 PM

Sorry, Tim. I'd not seen your post when I wrote mine. Great minds . . . .

Subject: RE: No, really -- what IS NOT folk music?
From: Tim Leaning
Date: 19 Oct 10 - 04:01 PM

I have agrape mind... That's about the size of it...

Subject: RE: No, really -- what IS NOT folk music?
From: Slag
Date: 19 Oct 10 - 04:48 PM

Ok ft, I got it. Here is your definitive answer, the necessary and sufficient for knowing what is not folk music:

                      EVERYTHING ELSE

You're welcome.

Subject: RE: No, really -- what IS NOT folk music?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 19 Oct 10 - 05:11 PM

LOL so on the last night of the proms the can be certain that the classical Arefusa(?sp) is not really a take on the Princess Royal.

Subject: RE: No, really -- what IS NOT folk music?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 19 Oct 10 - 05:21 PM

I don't think sufficient appreciation has been expressed [indeed, none] to GSS for his service in reproducing Mr Bearman's important letter here. Thank you, Dick. I did not previously know Bearman's work, until I read his Folk Music Journal article above, & now this letter to EFDSS executive. Without purporting doctrinairely to take sides in the dispute, I think it obvious that he is serious scholar and researcher, whose depoliticising work could do much to restore the balance to this [what many people, incl me, have long regarded as] grossly over-politicised field, in which too many avowed Marxists [Seeger, MacColl, Lloyd, Gammon, Harker...] have for too long carried their own agenda to far too great an extent.

I should like, for a moment, to turn around the thread title to read "What is folk music not?'; to which I will, purely, or anyhow mainly, as a debate-inducer, suggest the answer "It is not Primarily Political."

~Michael~

Subject: RE: No, really -- what IS NOT folk music?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 19 Oct 10 - 06:22 PM

Yes, MtheGM, I agree with you - thank you GSS. Although I would describe myself as a bit of a lefty I have long felt that Left Wing ideology has tended to obscure our understanding of trad. music, rather than illuminate it.

The more I read of Bearman's work, the more I sympathise with it and him. I particularly sympathise with his brave attempts to rescue Cecil Sharp's reputation from the unjustified smears of the likes of Harker. I note the involvement of Vic Gammon's name in this controversy. Nevertheless, VG has written a very interesting essay on Sharp in his introduction to the EFDSS publication, 'Still Growing: English Traditional Songs from the Cecil Sharp Collection'(2003). I would suggest that this is another essential read if you're in any way interested in Cecil Sharp and the Victorian/Edwardian folk song collectors.

Subject: RE: No, really -- what IS NOT folk music?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 19 Oct 10 - 06:23 PM

Just to confuse matters further, I'm a Marxist - now that I've said it once, I'm even an avowed Marxist! But my sympathies are almost entirely with Bearman, because on balance I think he's more or less correct. The tone of that letter is a bit extreme, but I think it reflects the frustration of someone who had identified actual errors in a respected work, only to find that it carried on being respected - albeit with occasional nods to his critical work, as if he was simply expressing an alternative point of view.

I should like, for a moment, to turn around the thread title to read "What is folk music not?'; to which I will, purely, or anyhow mainly, as a debate-inducer, suggest the answer "It is not Primarily Political."

Here's Peter Bellamy, from the clip uploaded by Suibhne recently:

'Songs of political comment have always been part of the tradition. The only thing I would take exception to is the strongly left-wing movement that would like to see that sort of song take over and eradicate non-political folk song - because non-political folk song is the majority of folk song. If you look at the traditional repertoire in detail, for every song that says "Isn't life terrible, let's do something to change it" there are at least twelve that say "Hey, isn't this great down here!"'

I tend to agree.

Subject: RE: No, really -- what IS NOT folk music?
From: Tootler
Date: 19 Oct 10 - 06:56 PM

I think Peter Bellamy has it about right.

There have been a number of threads recently protesting at attempts by the far right to hijack folksong for the purpose of furthering their own political ends, yet here we see what I have long suspected, that the far left have been just as guilty of the same thing and have been at it longer.

Subject: RE: No, really -- what IS NOT folk music?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 19 Oct 10 - 06:58 PM

These days, I tend to disagree. I'd now rather escape by just playing a tune that only means what I want it to mean,

Subject: RE: No, really -- what IS NOT folk music?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 03:55 AM

There seems to be a bit of a consensus emerging here - that's a first!
Perhaps this thread has turned out to be not quite as silly as its title!

Subject: RE: No, really -- what IS NOT folk music?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 04:25 AM

The politics are born from the class & cultural condesension that typifies the early revival (and upon which it was predicated as an ideology) irrespective of the political leanings of its perpetrators. In this respect, there is just as much class & cultural condescension on the left as there is on the right, which accounts for my general revulsion of political songwriting in general - folk or otherwise, be it Ewan MacColl or Robert Wyatt, both of whom I love in other respects. Whatever Sharp's actual political allegiances may or may not have been, the image that emerges (in The Imagined Village certainly) is that of an authoritarian autocrat hung up on his absolute correctness in matters of the culture of Folk Dance and Song.

Subject: RE: No, really -- what IS NOT folk music?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 04:47 AM

" ... the image that emerges (in The Imagined Village certainly) is that of an authoritarian autocrat hung up on his absolute correctness in matters of the culture of Folk Dance and Song."

I've noticed, throughout my life, that there's a tendency to confer labels, like "authoritarian autocrat" on people who say or write things that other people don't want to hear. Sharp was a doer and a deep and original thinker - perhaps he found himself in constant conflict with people who had already decided what Folk Dance and Song were and weren't prepared to even consider any evidence which conflicted with their preconceptions.

Subject: RE: No, really -- what IS NOT folk music?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 06:21 AM

I doubt the author has those sorts of preconceptions anyway, Shim - everything is sourced and accounted for accordingly and I get the impression (from the Imagined Village thread) that my impressions are a good deal more jaundiced than was her (very worthy & objective) intention. Whatever the apologists might say, Sharp did believe he was doing our National Culture of Folk Song & Dance a sevice by removing it from its unwashed traditional custodians (who barely understood its significance) and placing it into the hands of more accomplished & learned proponents - an attitude that prevails even unto this day. The more I read of C#, the more he reminds me not only of Joseph Smith, but of WAV.

Subject: RE: No, really -- what IS NOT folk music?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 06:34 AM

"removing it from its unwashed traditional custodians (who barely understood its significance) and placing it into the hands of more accomplished & learned proponents"

Sharp may indeed have attempted to rebrand folk music for the use of the middle classes, but in what sense did he try to remove it from its traditional custodians?

Subject: RE: No, really -- what IS NOT folk music?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 07:08 AM

I would have thought that very rebranding was part of its removal; the assumption that he was saving the songs from an invitable extinction if left unremoved was the motivating factor of The Revival. The craft of traditional singers as performers was overlooked given that no attempt was made to replicate traditional performance styles in his musical arrangements of such material or else his advices on how it ought to be performed by singers who were not just going to be Revival Singers of Traditional Songs (as we might tentatively regard ourselves today with due deference to Traditional Singers) but the New Folk. This is an attitude which isn't so very uncommon today, though one would hope, as I say, any Revival Singer would first reference (and reverence) the source which remains, in any case, the pure drop.

Subject: RE: No, really -- what IS NOT folk music?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 07:35 AM

"Removal" means to take away from one place and convey to another. What Sharp did (whatever over-pessimistic ideas he may have had about extinction) was to reproduce the form (or a tarted-up version of it) elsewhere. I don't see how that's stealing. If he'd nicked it, how come all those 'pure drop' singers like the Coppers, Pardon, Jordan, Blaxhall Ship, etc., carried on their singing traditions without any interference from him?

Attempts were made by at least some of the Edwardian collectors to record the subtleties of melodic variation and ornament that were essential to traditional performance style, and of course the more recent Revival, far from overlooking the craft of traditional performers, has celebrated it.

Subject: RE: No, really -- what IS NOT folk music?
From: Will Fly
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 07:55 AM

I'm no expert in this area by a long way but, presumably, after the collection and publication process had taken place by Sharp and others, there would have been, for some time, two parallel strands: (a) the continuum of the original singers in their locale - the Coppers being one example of this - and (b) the "tarted-up", arranged versions being introduced into schools and elsewhere.

Perhaps the effect of Sharp et al was to obscure (a) while bringing (b) into prominence - rather than remove (a) altogether.

Subject: RE: No, really -- what IS NOT folk music?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 08:44 AM

Whatever the eventual results, I think his intentions were clear enough i.e. to remove the songs to a safer haven where they would be better served than they would in their natural habitat which he regarded as not only doomed, but degenerate. His ideas on survival confirms this, that he was effectively harvesting songs long overdue from people who were barely capable of singing them, much less appreciating their true value. That he was mistaken in this is by the by; he thought he was right - that in so doing he was creating a new era of our national folk heritage, rather than some volkish fantasy based on an autocratic misinterpretation that to Sharp was absolute fact.

Subject: RE: No, really -- what IS NOT folk music?
From: The Sandman
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 08:55 AM

I certainly object to the FAR RIGHT trying to hijack folk music.but i would say folk music is not exclusively apolitical, it is political it is also non political, it can be and is both

Subject: RE: No, really -- what IS NOT folk music?
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 11:43 AM

Robert Burns dismounts stiffly from his horse on a dreich Winter's evening, having ridden forty miles through the muddy roads and lanes of Dumfriesshire, and pulls off his boots and sodden top-coat to sit wearily by the fire. Whilst Jean sets before him a bowl of broth, he reaches for a sheet or two of ruled Excise paper and writes a few lines he has been running over in his head for the last hour or so, testing them against the Scots air he wishes to provide with a set of words. Although of his own composition, he feels that they are closer in spirit to the songs of his compeers, the Common People, than the polite words set to that air three-quarters of a century ago by one of Allan Ramsay's "ingenious young gentlemen" in contributing to "The Tea-Table Miscellany" of the 1720s. These words have been sung by other polite ladies and gentlemen gathered around harpsichords in their Palladian villas, built by the Adam family, since their first publication, and he's also heard them sung at country weddings by friends and neighbours in Ayrshire, Edinburgh and Dumfries. After all, he found them first in "The Lark", a cheap collection of words (only) which he pored over incessantly as a youth; neither he nor anyone of his own "order" - the tillers of the land, not the owners - had ever been able to afford a collection printed with both words and musical scores. Not, that is, until James Johnson began publishing "The Scots Musical Museum", with notes struck cheaply on pewter plates rather than engraved, at great expense (everyone recognises how skilled a trade engraving is) on large copperplates. Since 1787, he has been contributing both his knowledge of Scots music, and his unrivalled skill in wedding words to a melody, to this publication; already he has made upwards of two hundred songs, sometimes adapting a line or two he found in David Herd's manuscripts (consulted when in Edinburgh) as well as in Herd's own two volumes of Ancient and Modern Scotish Songs, Heroic Ballads and Pastorals. He is startled out of what he sometimes calls a "poetic reverie" by Jean, who hands him a package from Edinburgh; opening it, he finds the most magnificent quarto edition of music he has ever seen. George Thomson - a violinist, and Chief Clerk to the Government's Trustees' Academy in Edinburgh - has at last published his "Select Collection of Original Scotish Airs", complete with accompaniments by Continental composers, all arranged for the new-farrant Pianoforte and the German Flute, with "opening and concluding symphonies", no less. When approached to provide some new verses, such as might be sung by ladies and gentlemen, Burns had readily agreed, stating only that he would not accept any payment; the common people, after all, had made songs for themselves "time out of mind" without thought of anything other than the love of their music and the approval of their neighbours, and he had done the same for Johnson's publication without thought of payment; even if the ordinary, down-to-earth Johnson could have afforded it, to take money for making songs would be (he grinned as he reflected on his words to Thomson) "downright sodomy of soul". At that very moment, a small sheet of paper fluttered from the pages; a Banker's Draft for £5; the price of one of Thomson's splendid volumes. A few curses followed, and the reflection that one more possession of the Common People was being appropriated by "People of Condition", who thought that everything had a price, or, at least, everything they thought worthy of taking. No doubt, in years to come, a few readers would look back on the effigy of an age, the few, "select" songs that the Polite deemed worthy of performance and publication, while the outwardly unimpressive publications of Herd, and Johnson, and that aggressive wee fellow Ritson from England, would be overlooked or forgotten. Perhaps some scholars would argue over such things as "authenticity" but - and here he sighed - no doubt, in the Imperial state that Britain had become, they would probably confine their arguments to the collecting activities of some gentlemen from England who would, maybe even a century after his own work, take an interest in the field. He lifted his fiddle from the wall and roughly picked out the notes of another air he remembered from childhood....

Subject: RE: No, really -- what IS NOT folk music?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 06:59 PM

Here are those















line breaks you sent for...

Subject: RE: No, really -- what IS NOT folk music?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 07:23 PM

Having read both books under discussion and now various pieces by Alan Bearman, personally the class-conscious activities of Sharp do not interest me, although Bearman's exposure of Dave Harker's statistics manipulation is somewhat disappointing. Sharp seemingly recorded faithfully all of the material he collected, unlike some who came before him. As I said earlier it is very unfortunate that Dave chose to put such a strong political slant on his expose of all the middle-class interference with the material. BUT the overall book still stands as one of the earliest and most comprehensive, exposing the extensive mediation of antiquarians, collectors etc., some of whom indulged in downright deception, and that's from my own research which backs up a lot of what Dave presents.
To me it matters little what the collectors published as long as the faithfully recorded field notes and manuscripts are left to posterity.

Subject: RE: No, really -- what IS NOT folk music?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 15 Nov 10 - 08:20 AM

Well, that went rather well, after I wasunable to get online for a while....

Maybe that's a hint...

The Indispensable Man

Sometime when you're feeling important,
Sometime when your ego's in bloom,
Sometimes when you take it for granted
You're the best qualified in the room.

Sometimes when you feel that your going
Would leave an unfillable hole,
Just follow these simple instructions
And see how they humble your soul.

Take a bucket and fill it with water,
Put your hand in it up to your wrist,
Pull it out and the hole that's remaining
Is a measure of how you'll be missed.

You can splash all you wish when you enter,
You may stir up the water galore,
But stop, and you'll find that in no time
It looks quiet the same as before.

The moral in this quaint example
Is do just the best that you can,
Be proud of yourself, but remember,
There's no indispensable man.

Subject: RE: No, really -- what IS NOT folk music?
From: GUEST,Patsy, pretending to work
Date: 16 Nov 10 - 08:22 AM

Well I am no expert but what is NOT folk music is easier to answer than what is. As with everything everyone has their own opinion the same as with Rock some people would rate Bon Jovi and others would rate Slipnot as being hard rock and belly-laugh at the thought of Bon Jovi.

My perception of folk especially as far as a festival goes is a damned good enjoyable gig for a fraction of the cost of watching a commercialised band and a good time is had by all. Especially good if it is a struggling local band. I enjoy Maddie Pryor, Irish Celtic bands, the Seekers (old), the Settlers, the Spinners, Pentangle, Faiport Convention etc. I also like Celtic Reggae mixes, can that be counted as folk? To me it is but to others it might be just experimental music. I've noticed that 'new' dreadlocked hippies now embrace some reggae at some of the venues that I have been. It isn't mainstream but can that be classed as a kind of folk or is that urban but then others call urban hip-hop.

Subject: RE: No, really -- what IS NOT folk music?
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Nov 10 - 03:29 PM

What is folk music?

Answer 1: A convenient marketing category helping us all find the records we happen to enjoy / prefer to avoid. As with any other genre classification, it has blurred edges but we all know what the term essentially means in this usage.

Answer 2: Music which emerges through the folk process, and hence is "the work of many hands". By this definition, if you know who wrote it, it ain't folk music.

Subject: RE: No, really -- what IS NOT folk music?
From: Tootler
Date: 16 Nov 10 - 06:25 PM

Answer 3: Popular music of former times. By this definition you can include material even when you know who wrote it.

I don't claim to be the originator of this definition but I have always liked it for its brevity. Like Answer 1, it has blurred edges - very blurred.