Do purists really exist?

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Jul 11 - 06:14 PM

And still neither a definition nor a source of information I can go to - no change there then
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: The Sandman
Date: 07 Jul 11 - 06:22 PM

I don't get the feeling that you are spending any time actually thinking about what I'm saying. With all humility and respect, please back off. john p quote
I have spent too much time thinking about what you are trying to say and have come to the conclusion it is rather like hampton court maze   
You would make an excellent policeman, you seem to approve of people being told that they should not sing with accompaniments in certain clubs because it is the rule[however absurd it is as a rule and it is absurd] it is absurd because no one imposes a rule upon unaccompanied singers that they have to perform with instruments, and it is absurd because it prevents certain singers from performing to the best of their ability and it also excludes performers who wish to accompany themselves.
music should be inclusive not exclusive, people imposing rules which prevent performers from performing to the best of their abilty, reminds me of the rule imposed on singers performing at the macColl Seeger singers club, where people had to perform songs from their own native background, so English people had to sing English songs NOT AMERICAN, it was imo a very big mistake, IMPOSING RULES FORCING SINGERS TO SING UNACCOMPANIED IS BACKWARD LOOKING.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 07 Jul 11 - 06:26 PM

"A non-traditional folk singer came into her place and screamed at her VERY obscenely for half an hour because she told him she wouldn't book him, and why. This was, at the time, one of the very few places in town that focused on traditional music. There were numerous places for him to play, but he felt that any place that said folk music had to automatically book him because he played folk."

I'm not surprised at this sorry tale at all. I suspect that it gets to the heart of what discussions like this are really all about. In the 50s and 60s there was a brief fad for a form called Skiffle followed by a guitar-based, Dylanesque commercial form to which was applied the label 'Folk'; this was/is widely popular - and there's no reason why it shouldn't be (although I'll put my cards on the table and say that it doesn't particularly appeal to me).

At the same time there evolved a less commercial, grass-roots movement based on traditional Folk music, and two of the leading lights/prime movers in this latter movement were Lloyd and MacColl. The latter was an inspired but controversial figure who was associated with a club which once had a policy which demanded that people who sang at that club should only sing songs from their own region. There were perfectly good reasons for this - which have been discussed, at great length, before. Nevertheless, this (now long defunct) policy has caused apoplexy, in some circles, ever since.

I suspect that this on-going apoplexy about a prehistoric policy, and all of this constant droning on about purists, is because 'Folk' singers, who probably either don't like, or can't see the point of, traditional based Folk, think (like the singer in the story above)that they should have unrestricted access to the clubs based on traditional Folk.

At the same time there have been, in the long history of the Post-War Revival, a few silly buggers who have said things like, "you can't bring that guitar in here" and "you're singing it wrong" etc. Such people should be dealt with by giving them a good, hard slap!

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: John P
Date: 07 Jul 11 - 06:48 PM

GSS,
Wow, you are really fixated on this. Why is it so important to you? For the tenth time, would you book a heavy rock act into a folk club you were running? Would you want to perform folk music in a heavy rock club?

For the record, I would make a terrible policeman, since I am an inveterate rule breaker. I still wouldn't want to play my guitar in a singing-only club. There's breaking rules, and then there's being a jerk (as in complete and utter arsehole). Please note that I've never said I agree with a singing-only policy. I don't, actually. But it's THEIR BLOODY CLUB! They get to do what they want, and their audience apparently likes it. Why is it any of your business? Oh, sorry, I've asked you that several times already without any answer, so forgive me for wasting your bandwidth once again.

As for my intelligibility, go find an English teacher and show them my posts and yours, and see what they have to say about clear writing. And reading comprehension. You sound like a pot calling a stainless steel pan black.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 07 Jul 11 - 07:02 PM

I think Banjiman knows I was being semi-facetious, Jim... There is a serious point in there, though. Some of the 'trad-a-like' stuff is very good, but some is such cringe-inducingly bad fake-folk-by-numbers, verily it offendeth mine ears. In such circumstances I'd much rather listen a decent contemporary singer-songwriter who isn't trying to be anything but what they are. Like this feller (listen to the song called 'Romance is Dead')

I think Shimrod has sort of hit the nail on the head though. This 'split' in the postwar folk revival scene is as old as the scene itself. Personally I can live with it, but my bottom line is that I tend to judge a song or a performance by what it tastes like rather than by what it says on the tin, to use a parallel Jim has sometimes used. To stretch it further, this means if it says beans and it is beans, I don't necessarily know till I've tried 'em whether they're succulent beans in a rich, thick sauce or hard little pellets in a thin gruel. And if the tin says beans and when I open it, it's pear halves in syrup, then sometimes that's a nice surprise and sometimes its a pain in the arse. There again, I do have obscenely catholic tastes and a blithe disregard for labels... Snail ice-cream, anyone?

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Goose Gander
Date: 07 Jul 11 - 07:04 PM

"I must point out that all music is the consequence of such cultural / musical process, what's so special about folk?"

In the passage I quoted above, you yourself alluded to the specific cultural/musical processes in the evolution of folk music that make it "special"; these processes make folk music (not Folk Music)distinctive from other kinds of music such as classical, marching band, and death metal.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: ripov
Date: 07 Jul 11 - 08:11 PM

What is generally termed folk music (not sure about capitalisation or its implication) may indeed be different from other MODERN forms, but is much closer to classical music (not in the pedantic sense) which was hardly a seperate branch of music then, and marches (which it includes) FROM ITS OWN PERIOD (say 1600-1750). Music, like most other human activities, has changes of fashion quite frequently, and those familiar with them can date musical styes to within a few decades or better. Listen to concertos by Handel, Vivaldi, and Boyce. Obviously by different composers, but very similar, because they had the same external influences. This "fashionable" sound of the period is what we recognise as the "folk" sound. And we can probably date it, perhaps a little roughly, the earlier tunes probably more modal, because the main influence was church music, and later tunes more melodic with the popularisation of "classical" concerts, and more formal dances (think Jane Austen)
All music, not just "folk", will be played in a style that owes something to the fashion of the times, because that is our main influence.
That is where the Good Purist comes in.
S/He researches the period and performing styles when the music was composed, and is able to demonstrate how it was originally played (maybe). This is a Good Thing. We know our music's origins, however we subsequently choose to play it.
Then there's the Bad Purist who attempts to prevent the music evolving by only approving performance in the original style.
Otherwise referred to as "precious"; this is a Bad Thing.

BTW does the 1954 text include a definition of "working class"?

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: John P
Date: 07 Jul 11 - 08:54 PM

Thank you ripov. Well said.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Jul 11 - 03:14 AM

"I think Banjiman knows I was being semi-facetious, Jim"

Really! I'm so disappointed. Especially as yours is the only definition of tradalike or "in the tradition" songwriting that I have been offered.

Jim, you are still waiting for a definition of "purist" (from whom I'm not sure, I don't think from me though as I only used the term once, and that was in jest).

I'm still waiting for a definition (from you) as to the Tradalike (i.e. NOT folk, in the terms that you commonly use) songs that were acceptable at the club you were involved in. I'm also interested in how these songs contributed to the title "folk club" doing what it said on the tin.

This is important stuff for me, I've moved away from calling the events we put on "folk" in response to a lot of what I read on here (as well as the "f" word putting off a lot of potential local non-folky audience) and called it either Acoustic Icons or simply The Village Concerts........ For me this debate is not purely academic, it has practical implications for what we run. Oh, and by the way, we still put on lots of Folk (even by it's purest, traditional, definition) acts, just not exclusively, so it seemed safer to move away from the folk tag.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Banjiman
Date: 08 Jul 11 - 03:15 AM

Above was me!

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 08 Jul 11 - 03:31 AM

"It seemed safer to move away from the folk tag"

In that case, Banjiman, have a listen to these and these and see if you fancy then for one of your nights! PM me if you do...

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 08 Jul 11 - 03:52 AM

Following on from my previous post I think that the whole 'what is folk'?/what is a folk purist?' debate can be neatly summed up in the following dialogue:

'Folk' singer: "I do folk; gimme a gig in your club, man!"

Folk club organiser: "Sorry but no. You see we only book people who do traditional type material."

'Folk' singer: "Whadya mean, no! You f***ing purist!"

And this dialogue, in some form or other, has been repeated over and over for at least the last 50 years, and will probably be repeated for the next 50.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Banjiman
Date: 08 Jul 11 - 04:07 AM

"PM me if you do... "

I can't PM as my Mudcat account is screwed up. But email me.

Nicely written publicity blurb Mr Cringe!

---

Of course, you could e-mail Joe and get your Mudcat account unscrewed...
[e-mail]-

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Jul 11 - 04:30 AM

"Of course, you could e-mail Joe and get your Mudcat account unscrewed..."

Which I did several months ago and got no response! But I'll try again.

---

Maybe it ended up in junk mail, which happens...I e-mailed the info to your e-mail address of record.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Banjiman
Date: 08 Jul 11 - 04:59 AM

Thanks Joe, sorted now!

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 08 Jul 11 - 05:39 AM

these processes make folk music (not Folk Music)distinctive from other kinds of music such as classical, marching band, and death metal.

No they don't though, because these processes are an integral part of those other sorts of music too. What makes each genre special is the aesthetic, cultural & musicological factors which rest at the heart of musical diversity and ensure that there'll always be room for more stlyes, idioms, genres, & traditions, in the future. Any type of so-called Folk Music can go by another name - just another idiom, like different languages or different styles of art, which, in the end, are all the ongoing consequence of units of individual human creativity operating collectively, culturally, socially, organically. There's no music on the planet where this isn't the case.

So in other words, no, you can't name any collector who believed that the working class was incapable of producing anything, and you certainly can't cite the offending words.

Offending words? The whole thing is writ large in the very DNA of the thing. One of the more moving passages in Georgina Boyes' The Imagined Village is when she quotes Joseph Jacobs on the nature of individual creativity with respect of free-styling (for want of a better term) Indo-European folk tales. This opinion is widely regarded as mistaken, but not by me. In Living Traditions, the free-styling of material is integral to the life of the thing and there is no reason why Traditional Ballad Singers, Storytellers, & Folk Singers weren't able to freely create as it suited them to do so. In the European Folk Tale analogues abound, often o'erleaping cultural & linguistic boundaries; same goes for ballads and songs where the themes run fluidly with random adaptation, sampling, making, remaking all being essential aspects of a Living Tradition perpetuated by master craftsmen & women. By masters I mean ordinary people well versed in the soul of the thing, in The Tradition as it were - which is NOT the songs themselves, but such stuff as songs are made on.

Again, it comes down to individuals, albeit in a time when the only micophones were the human ears, the only recording medium the human brain, and the notion of copyright and other legalities hadn't even been thought of yet. The Grapevine was all, and songs spread swift as gossiping tongues and were changed with each re-making NOT because of being wrongly remembered, but to suit the requirements of each individual singer. Chances are they were never sung the same way twice. We can see the collected legacy of this surviving in the collections cited by Jim earlier; The Traditional Songs so eagerly sought after by scholarly academics from an essentially debased proletariat who were very much of an inferior order of being - deferential, humiliated, humble; just as the indigenous populations of the empire were help to be inferior, the oppressed and huddled masses of lumpen humanity, exploited by the Right and patronised by the Left, but never allowed to live and breathe on account of their essential individual uniqueness.

One is reminded of Maud Karpeles introducing one universally celebrated Folk singer as NOT being a real Folk Singer on account of her having been to college. Tongue in cheek? I think not. The 1954 Definition (of Karpeles) is full of assumptions of Folk Character and Community typical of Folkloric studies in general, whereby human individuality is removed from the equation entirely and ones worth (if any) is solely as a passive Tradition Bearer in the context of ones collective community. Know your place, work man.

In Classical Traditions the Community is one of Individuals. We remember names like Henry Purcell, but what of the likes of John Blow and Pelham Humphries and the hundreds of others with whom Purcell studied and learned, and locked horns with on a daily basis, ploughing over as much old ground (and much so-called Folk material) as breaking new? These days we might call it paying dues. In Folk Music, the illusion of collectivism is the consequence of an indifferent educated class misunderstanding and mythologising the actual nature of Alien Human Culture which assumes that by dint of its Inferiority it must be Truly Different in terms of the Authentic, or the Exotic, or the Pure - and then has the neck to make up the terms on which to judge it.

If we defined Folk Music on account of it being simply (and properly) The Music of The Folk, then people here wouldn't be interested. Instead Folk must be this other thing that The Folk are barely even aware of, thus Folk, as it stands, and at its very worst, is a signifier of rabid bourgeois fantasy. At best, it means anything you want it to mean. Hardly the wonder Folk Roots and the International Folk Music Council changed their names to downplay the F-word. As terms Roots and Traditional Music have their problems, but in the manifest remits of both Froots and the Internaional Council for Traditional Music, and the work being done by singers and musicians old and young the world over... well, I don't think there's any real cause to worry, do you?

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Howard Jones
Date: 08 Jul 11 - 08:42 AM

It's easy to be critical of the early collectors, but it must be remembered that they were mostly not academics but enthusiasts, who were developing techniques and methodology as they went along. Above all, they were inevitably affected by the class assumptions of their time, as well as by their own political or romantic prejudices.

The idea of "folk music" arose from empirical observation. They realised there was a body of music which differed from contemporary art and popular music. They found it among the "lower classes" and saw it was in danger of dying out, because as this class became more upwardly mobile it was seen not only as old-fashioned but symbolic of what they were trying to "better themselves" from.

Just because the collectors' attitudes and conclusions may have been simplistic or even simply wrong does mean that what they identified as "folk" did not exist, or that it is not a meaningful concept today, even if the word itself has become debased (for entirely separate reasons)

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 08 Jul 11 - 09:24 AM

Thanks for the precis, Howard - I do go on at times.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Goose Gander
Date: 08 Jul 11 - 02:09 PM

Very nicely put, Howard.

Terms like folk, traditional, and folk process are nothing more than shorthand for forms based upon processes that you yourself have indicated that you understand (again, I refer you to your own words I quoted above). You have described your session as 100% traditional, you refer directly above to "Traditional Ballad Singers, Storytellers, & Folk Singers"; clearly, you intend these words to mean something when you use them, you just have a problem when other people use them. Apparently, what is meaningful when you say it is meaningless when I say it. And you say you're not muddying the waters?

"No they don't though, because these processes are an integral part of those other sorts of music too."

Not in the same way and not to the same degree. There is nothing comparable in classical, marching band and death metal (to continue with these examples) that is equivalent to hundreds of different variants of Child #200 with divergent melodies, arrangments, plots, lyrical devices; the 'Drowsy Sleeper'/'Silver Dagger' cluster of ballads/songs in North America; or the ubiquitous 'Cotton-Eyed Joe'. The diversity of forms reflects "a cultural idiom of song making & remaking in an largely working-class oral culture which may have preceded or succeeded the Broadsides," to borrow a phrase, something that cannot be demonstrated in the desemination and performance of Beethoven's choral symphonies (for example).

"Offending words? The whole thing is writ large in the very DNA of the thing."

More sweeping generalizations, Sub. And still no specific reference to a collector (an individual, mind you) that ever believed that the working class was incapable of producing anything. Nor any indication you are aware that collecting and scholarship have moved on from those mist-shrouded, romantic beginnnings. You might want to look into the work of Mark Wilson and Art Rosenbaum in North America for a more up-to-date philosopy and practice of collecting, and more importantly to hear some incredible music.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Steamin' Willie / fluids whatever
Date: 08 Jul 11 - 05:59 PM

On holiday but pissing it down so sat playing with iPhone ( sign of the times, finding something to play with but I digress)

First, thanks as ever to M'Unlearned Friend for inadvertently making my point whilst trying to make me look a pillock quite a few posts back.

Second, I am tempted to write a definitive book of rules and state that this is folk and nothing else is. I am of the opinion many people would feel such rules a comfort blanket.

Thirdly, I note that poor Joe Offer seems to have to read this thread, presumably out of a deep sense of service. What the hell you must be thinking about us weird buggers this side of the pond.... Don't worry, we get a kick out of lobbing bricks at each other.

And to everybody else, complaining about purists indicates a sense of purism.

Goodnight from a wet and windy campsite in the lake district. Singapore next week for part 2 of the hols. At least the rain is warm and short lived there.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: ripov
Date: 08 Jul 11 - 08:12 PM

The "working class" (particularly the urban working class) in the period when collectors like Sharp were active, were living in completely different ("Dickensian") circumstances to the mainly rural workers in earlier times. And many of those earlier workers were craftsmen, self employed people that nowadays, and even in victorian times, would have been regarded as "middle class". The "wage slave" was a product of the Industrial Revolution, possibly driven from the old way of life by the Enclosures. These events are well documented in folk-song.
Particularly as far as music is concerned the concept of these workers as unlearned is probably incorrect. I think it was Suibhne who mentioned this earlier, and just to back it up here are a couple of quotes;
from the Oxford Companion to Music referring to the Metrical Psalters (circa 1600);(Hymns and Hymn Tunes 5) "this was a period when sightsinging was a common accomplishment". And from Trevalyan's "English Social History", again referring to these psalters "these.... often supplied the music in four parts.... so that "the unskilful with small practice may attain to sing that part which is fittest for their voice". Which implies that
1. it was normal to be able to sing from music, and that
2. experienced singers would improvise appropriate parts on their own.
Again the first edition of The Beggar's Opera had melody but no bass. Well, a competent musician can play a suitable bass without the dots, can't he.
In any case, should we not expect a complete continuum of musical ability from the veriest amateur to the top professional; and so regard any division of this continuum as artificial.

GooseGander, I think you are coming from the wrong end about classical music. Yes, concert performances of beethoven will be very similar to each other, because the performers all play the same version, and indeed only that one version exists. The same applies at times to the "folk" scene today. But regarding folk not sounding like classical, apart from not sounding like Dylan (is Dylan folk?), Boyce doesn't sound anything like Birtwhistle either (thank goodness).
I think it was Beethoven who got cross about performers playing his music their own way (or was it Haydn), it was certainly normal up till then for this to happen.
Try a few (particularly newer) recordings of Vivaldi's "Four Seaons" and you will find they vary considerably.
And have you heard the renderings of Pachabel's Canon, as it is sometimes played in sessions?
But it's good to know what the composer intended, before making our own "adjustments".

Suibhne, my recollection of the classical scene is that knowledge of the teacher/pupil relationship is very important for tracing the handing down of technical matters and of interpretation, and regarded almost as a pedigree, so unlike the folk tradition the path of the classical tradition is well documented. (yes I know I said the distinction was artificial, I'm being an artificer)
For a modern example see http://www.violinist.com/blog/weekendvote/20088/8963/

And as you say the improvisation not only of music but of story was held in high regard. The old name for lyrics, the "lay", sounds very close to the "lie" told by "liars" or story-tellers.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Goose Gander
Date: 08 Jul 11 - 09:18 PM

Ripov, your statements about classical performance confirm my comments.

"Yes, concert performances of beethoven will be very similar to each other, because the performers all play the same version, and indeed only that one version exists."

One version of the 9th is all we have (but it's certainly enough). Conversely, there is no 'right' version of 'Pretty Saro', there are multiple versions, reflecting the processes that (awkward though the phrase is) we call the folk process. Different versions of Vivaldi's work will differ, but not to the degree that variants of Child #84 differ. There is still Vivaldi's score to refer to; a would-be ballad singer in 2011 has hundreds of recordings, transcriptions and texts to refer to (or he or she can make up his own version).

"The same applies at times to the "folk" scene today."

First of all, today's revivalist folk scene is not the same tradition as the ones documented by Sharp, Lomax and others; secondly, there are plenty of different versions of any given song, each 'right' in its own way, but no single 'correct' version, so I'm not sure the same does apply.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Jul 11 - 02:27 AM

Haven't got time to get to involved in this - am in the middle of our traditional music summer school - briefly.
"Second, I am tempted to write a definitive book of rules and state that this is folk and nothing else is"
It's facile and unpleasent comments like this that send threads like this crashing in flames make it impossible to discuss our different approaches to our music(s) - a form of cyber-bullying.
There are no "rules" as to how folk music "should" be performed (other than those invented by people who neither understand nor particularly like traditional music"). There certainly has been no evidence of their existance other than 'urban-legend-type' references to "purists".
There certainly are personal tastes, but these get bulldozed into the ground by stupid and nasty phrases like "purist", "finger-in-ear" and "folk police (or even fascist)".
The folk scene has built an impregnable wall around itself, leaving us with a sickly anodyne critical mechanism by which we can judge how well or badly we are doing and what impact our music is having outside our 'folk-greenhouses'.
Music calls
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Jul 11 - 03:25 AM

"...you can't name any collector who believed that the working class was incapable of producing anything, and you certainly can't cite the offending words."
Regarding the creation of folk song, this from Phillips Barry in his note to The Lakes of Col Finn in The New Green Mountain Songster:
"Popular tradition, however, does not mean popular origin. In the case of of the ballad, the underlying folklore is Irish de facto, but not de jure: the ballad is of Oriental and literary origin, and has sunk to the level of the "folk" which has the keeping of folklore. To put it in a single phrase, memory not invention is the function of the folk " (my emphasis).
I believe this attitude reflects that of many collectors and academics, who have treated our field singers as merely sources of songs and nothing more, the result being that we have little or no information as to what the singers thought of their songs, if anything.
The unconconcious folk-singer whose singing was regarded as unconsidered and as "instinctive as birdsong" has been one of the most prevailing images in the field of folk song scholarship since it began. We even have our own 'expert' on this forum who, based on "gut reaction", is keen to prove that the folk had no part in the making of our traditional songs, which, he claims, were really the products of an army of pixies slaving away in cellars of broadside publishing houses in order to give us our oral folk literature because the 'ordinary' people were too busy earning a living to create anything artistic for themselves - not my opinion after nearly 40 years of interviewing some of the remaining few source singers left to us.
As a whole, the working class has always been regarded as being incapable of artistic creation, other than on the most crude and basic level; the main reason why folk song has been treated as an object of ridicule by the arts establishment and the media (and even evident on this thread) - the 'Rambling Sid Rumpo' school of thought.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Steamin' Willie
Date: 09 Jul 11 - 03:46 AM

And then goes on to fan the flames..... Thanks as ever Jim.

I would have sympathy with that if this were such a thread. However it started as a discussion around the word purist. Methinks it also debated whether purism is a nice or nasty label. Since then it has become a rather academic debate around what is folk, similar to every other ruddy thread. Although whenever I or others try debating that subject, you get all precious. Perhaps you are answering the original thread by accident?

Some very deep meaningful discussion here but needs an appropriate thread starting. Every time Jim starts typing, we answer the original question and that's a shame because there is a place for learned people like Jim but not necessarily chairman of the folk board.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Goose Gander
Date: 09 Jul 11 - 04:01 AM

Jim Carroll goes to bat for Sub, doesn't often happen, but I will admit that is a good example of an old attitude toward 'the folk' and 'folksong'.   Jim, you are a collector with a very different attitude and approach. I often listen to recordings collected by you and the aforementioned Mark Wilson and Art Rosenbaum, I don't often dig through the moldy old writings of Barry. My point is that collecting and folklore scholarship moved on from those naive and often condescending beginnings. Please read the late American folklorist Archie Green for a view of folksong diametrically opposed to that put forward by Barry, check out Norm Cohen as well.

"The unconconcious folk-singer whose singing was regarded as unconsidered and as 'instinctive as birdsong' has been one of the most prevailing images in the field of folk song scholarship since it began." - Jim, you have to know that view has been strongly challenged for decades, and not just by you.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Howard Jones
Date: 09 Jul 11 - 04:10 AM

It's true this thread has drifted away from the original topic onto the usual well-worn tracks. But the reason we have this debate about "purists" comes back to the difficulty we have in defining "folk" - or more accurately getting some people to accept it.

I doubt whether they have the same issues in other genres, or at least to the same extent. OK I know of the rift in jazz between trad and bebop, but if I go to a jazz club I know broadly what to expect - the same if I go to a classical concert, or an event billed as reggae, northern soul or whatever. If I go to a folk club - some clubs anyway - I could hear almost anything.

The strangest thing is why all these people performing other than traditional folk want to squeeze inside the folk tent. Apart from brief periods, folk has been deeply unfashionable and uncool. My cynical view is that the folk scene offers them an opportunity to perfor before an often uncritical audience, and to become a big fish in a small pond.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Jul 11 - 04:33 AM

"My point is that collecting and folklore scholarship moved on from those naive and often condescending beginnings."
It may have GG but the result of those attitudes means we have no way of assessing what our traditional singers regarded their songs - the source information is not there and those who carried it are no longer with us. I agree that some US collectors and researchers did attempt to redress this situation, but in the UK we are still in the world of 'birdsong' - one result being that we have a revival that can't tell its folk arse from its elbow and where every singer from Melba to Meatloaf has to be regarded as "folk" because he ain't a horse.
"Every time Jim starts typing, we answer the original question"
Willie - you have not addressed one single point I have made and have each time reverted to childish name calling.
I am not a "purist", I am not an academic or an expert - I am an enthusiast who spent most of my musical life in folk clubs, but who decided to lift up the corner and try to see what lay underneath, mainly by talking to older singers, but also reading the occasional book as well - try it.
Please try to put a little thought behind your words - it makes for better understanding and tolerance.
And ntw - I'm certainly not just "a collector with a very different attitude and approach" - my musical approach was formed in the clubs and is an extension of that experience.
Must go - music calls.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 09 Jul 11 - 04:51 AM

"The unconconcious folk-singer whose singing was regarded as unconsidered and as 'instinctive as birdsong' has been one of the most prevailing images in the field of folk song scholarship since it began."

I like the like the idea of uncon-consciousness. Otherwise I can run with that as an apt analogy of how these songs would have existed in their Natural Habitat, much less been seen to flow by the outsiders. One thinks of Bird singing, or Coltrane, or Miles, or Louis Armstring - or - any true master of their art - be it Jeannie Robertson - Phil Tanner - Sam Larner - and the countless others that were missed entirely - whose singing was, indeed, as natural to them as birdsong.

Meanwhile, I think the field of folksong scholarship is now a Tescos...

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 09 Jul 11 - 05:10 AM

Mr Fluids has as usual no idea what he is talking about.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,mother macree anon purist
Date: 09 Jul 11 - 05:12 AM

Come on you lot!!!!!!!!!! does it really matter.?

I learnt to sing,enjoy and perform folk when i did not know what folk was. Have a look at the book about the Elliots of Birtley when they say "We di'nt know thst we were singing folk songs till Ewan Maccoll told us"
I did and still enjoy singing and that it is it.

ENJOY ENJOY, now get out and sing!!! damn you!! not sit around on your collective smug arses annalysing it.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Jul 11 - 05:29 AM

'Have a look at the book about the Elliots of Birtley when they say "We di'nt know thst we were singing folk songs till Ewan Maccoll told us"'

But the point is that they were singing folk songs. Just because they hadn't put a particular label on them didn't mean they wern't folk.

There are two aspects to this argument: the purely academic one which is of only passing interest to the ordinary music lover, and the more practical one of what sort of music is appropriate in a "folk club". The latter is important, because there is a case for saying that too broad an approach has contributed to the general decline in folk clubs.

I don't know of many clubs which had an actual policy, but most were self-selecting and the division into trad and contemporary clubs was more a matter of natural selection than edict. If a club doesn't want to book a performer because they don't suit the style of the club that's not being "purist" or "fascist", that's just paying regard to the expectations of the club's audience.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 09 Jul 11 - 05:35 AM

Or is the field of Folk song scholarship the one where the pit used to be? Or the old houses long since demolished under Schedule D? The people who lived there didn't realise they were singing Folk Songs either. In my experience most of them weren't, but they were still singing like birds, like old 'Uncle' Jimmy, a ex-miner who'd been singing semi-professionally around the Durham pit villages since 1920 and had never heard of any of the folk songs I asked him about... And he was most keen to impress me too, which he did with his encyclopedic knowledge of early 20th century Popular Song, stories and traditions. He liked The Colliers' Rant though; I showed it to him in my facsimile of Bells' Northern Bards (1812).

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Steamin' Willie
Date: 09 Jul 11 - 05:52 AM

Yeah but then, I don't make a living out of talking balls M'Unlearned friend.

Jim, when you get back from your music or whatever (I'm going to my hill to walk up for that matter and about as relevant) please note that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. just saying you are not a purist and then displaying all the traits discussed in this thread isn't answering anything. I haven't addressed what you have put for a reason. It is interesting but is not relevant to this discussion.

You can be an enthusiast all you like but that doesn't stop you fitting the stereotype that this thread started describing before it became another what is folk.

Folk is what you say it is and it is what I say it is. Funnily enough, strip out the pretentious words he uses and it might, just might also be what M'Unlearned Friend says it is. Alternatively show me the copyright. And before you say it, dictionaries are reactive not proactive so don't try that one. Even Rumpole of Kent might understand that.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 09 Jul 11 - 06:27 AM

But the point is that they were singing folk songs. Just because they hadn't put a particular label on them didn't mean they wern't folk.


And so were they called to their sacred mission, bestowed from on high in reward for the purity of their innocent compliance to the holy law whilst other lesser mortals slipped through the dragnet. These days there's no such purity, much less innocence, though occasionally one hears of individuals being hailed for such qualities, these random messiahs feted as The Real Thing according to the Holy Writ of both the Old and New Testments of the Revival. Pure blood lines, unsullied by the baser elements and the corrupting influences of Popular Culture, such people are seen as saviours.

And so the Folk Myth endureth, and will endureth, until The Folk Rapture, which, as predicted, will happen on the 23rd June 2024. On this day, the True Folk and the Faithful thereof will be carried aloft into Paradise, leaving the rest of us to heave a huge sigh of relief and simply get on with the very pleasant business of making beautiful music together.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Folknacious
Date: 09 Jul 11 - 07:27 AM

GUEST Steamin' Willie: the stereotype that this thread started describing before it became another what is folk.

Thank you, Steam. As the person who started this thread and is truly staggered by its length and the effects of blowback, I must say that the last thing I had in mind was another "what the f**k is f**k?" war between the usual suspects beating each other around the heads with prejudices, dictionaries and hot air ballons.

For what it's worth, in spite of it all - and I must admit to not having carefully read every word due to my war wound - I'm still not entirely sure my original question was answered. Yes, lots of people have popped up wearing their stereotypes with pride, but whether the term "purist" is correctly applied is questionable. There's been an awful lot of narrow minded, close-horizoned, lack of broad experience low level bigotry expressed, but that's not being a "purist" because to be a "purist", surely you have to not only know and love your field but also have good knowledge of everything else surrounding it or you can't possibly make value judgements. I don't see a lot of that: I see a lot of "I know about what I think is folk and I don't like the other stuff because I've hardly experienced it." Surely that's not being a purist, it's rather more like being an old (or insert age range of choice) fart.

But thank you all, I think.

Ken

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 09 Jul 11 - 07:43 AM

You can't say whether there are purists until you know what a purist is. That's why I put up the dictionary definitions earlier.

I even indicated that I didn't plan to get into "what is folk" (or words to that sort of effect) until horse wnakers started. But I do know pretentious drivel when I see it, and I see a lot of it here, mostly apparently from horses.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Howard Jones, who really must reset his cook
Date: 09 Jul 11 - 09:55 AM

I didn't get into folk music because of some academic definition, or because of its class origins or political associations. I discovered a genre of music which I could relate to - and importantly, which I could play at a time when I had barely mastered three chords on guitar. That music was labelled "folk", which at that time still meant mainly traditional music (or rather the revival interpretation of it), although confusingly it also covered another genre which seemed to have little in common other than usually being accompanied with acoustic guitar.

As I mentioned in a previous post, these two did drift apart for a while, more as a result of natural selection than club policies - people naturally gravitated towards the clubs whose music they preferred. More recently they seem to have come together again, and the "folk" tag seems to have become even wider. I have a BBC Folk Awards album on which one of the instrumental tracks not only shows no relationship to traditional melodic structures but the instrumentation and manner of performance bears no relationship to either traditional or the usual revival styles. It's not bad music, but I can see nothing about it to justify labelling it "folk".

We all seem to be able to agree that "traditional" music is "folk". We may find that hard to define, but I don't think that's as important as is made out - I can't define an elephant, but I know one when I see it. It seems to be the people who want other styles of music also to be called "folk" who complain most loudly about "purists" trying to keep them out, but I have to question their motives for wanting to be included.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 09 Jul 11 - 10:24 AM

Yes I admit I'm a purist. None of you have reached my exacting standards. I advise you all to jack it in.

I did consider liquidating the disparate elements who have dragged the tradition down to its present sorry state. One night when i was drunk I put a machne gun in one of my guitar cases. I've forgotten which one. But if i turn up at your folk club and by mischance I have picked the case with a machine gun in it. There will be trouble.

I am a purist. Not a man to trifled with. You all need to pull your socks up, and start behaving yourself. People who forget the words and the tune of the song they are performing - you have been warned!

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Steamin' Willie
Date: 09 Jul 11 - 01:33 PM

Ironically, I have a lot of time for purists as in taking a hobby seriously and combining the historical research of how we expressed ourselves and getting good abstract enjoyment out of perpetuating that medium.

Lots of big words there.

Nonetheless I see the difference between a person taking a huge interest in what we loosely call folk and somebody berating others for not fitting their ideal.

Just to keep the purist term a neutral one, I don't think a bloke who goes in to a barmaid and asks for her to Allow him to partake of a jar of her finest real ale is a purist, he is a prat who cannot ask for a pint of bitter. I see similar prats once they have their pint and are discussing the merits of a song some poor sod is trying to sing. They are not purists, they are prats. a purist may know a bit about the song, might even understand what specific gravity means with regard to the keg beer disguised with a clever hand pull valve, but purist they are not.

A purist for me is somebody who then can't understand why we don't all embarrass the bar staff and piss off the singers.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 09 Jul 11 - 05:41 PM

We all seem to be able to agree that "traditional" music is "folk".

I don't. All music is Traditional, but not all music is Folk. All Folk music is Traditional though.

We may find that hard to define

It's easy as ABC; elementary musicology in fact.

but I don't think that's as important as is made out

It's an ongoing bugbear for sure, but not without good reason.

I can't define an elephant, but I know one when I see it.

That's because elephants exist and aren't some rare breed of folk species that only comes into existence by subjecting it to an absurd & unrealistic criteria to prove it is biologically different from any other breed of animal.

It seems to be the people who want other styles of music also to be called "folk" who complain most loudly about "purists" trying to keep them out

Who does this? Or maybe you think by pointing out the Myriad of Styles you can call Folk these days by way of their context - i.e the many sorts of music you hear in Folk Clubs or discussed on Mudcat - this opens the floodgates? BUT it's not a matter of wanting this, far from it, rather it's a matter of facing facts. Nothing to do with Horses either, just to do with sorts of things your likely to hear done in the Name O' Folk these days.

but I have to question their motives for wanting to be included.

There aren't any motives; it's all down to the Come All Ye inclusivity which is the nature of the Folk beast - be it bands, clubs, festivals, Mudcat or whatever. Where there is Folk there is always going to be all sorts of music and approaces that will irk the self-styled Purist, not because the music is at fault or doesn't belong, but because Purists are complete and utter twats who know nowt about the music they claim to love. If they did, they wouldn't be purists. What they do know about is a perverse small minded craving for Rules and Regulations so they may adopt a Jobsworth attitude to further the misery that their anal view of the world dictates they must share.

I've met a few, not many as I say, for which I am truly thankful.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 10 Jul 11 - 03:11 AM

Theres a lot to be said for an anal view
Its gets to the bottom of me and you
My pleasure has often been quite unalloyed
Looking up at the stools and the haemmeroids
If you're a bit of an aresehole, to thyself be true
And demand a room with an anal view.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 10 Jul 11 - 04:11 AM

On the basis of what has been said above I cannot agree that all music is traditional. That assertion seems to involve eliding the scales that are used, and possibly the timings, with the works composed using them. It would obviously be impossible to contend that a set of words that I might compose today or tomorrow were traditional save in the obviously ridiculous sense that each individual word I used was traditional and the grammatical structures I used likewise. Even that plainly unuseful argument breaks down when applied to music: for example there was some years ago a South American composer who decided to break the octave down into 64 intervals rather than 12. Clearly the music he composed was not in any sense traditional unless you assert that the existence of an octave is a tradition rather than a mathematical fact. In short the assertion is a typical piece of horse dishonesty (or horse puckey if you prefer).

The absurd academic arguments employed (obfuscated by frequent gratuitous philological exhibitionism) to seek to invalidate the core views of the 1954 definition are it seems to me equally dishonest in context - as is the outright false assertion that the 1954 definition uses the expression, much less is founded on views about, "working class".

Even the story about Karpeles allegedly saying that a person was not a folk singer because he had been educated involves a probably malicious slight: I am in no doubt that Karpeles would have been aware of (and largely observed) the distinction between a folk singer and a folksong singer - one used for example in early Martin Carthy sleeve notes.

This is not, however, in principle a "what is folk" thread. It asks "Do purists exist". That can only be answered by knowing what a purist is.

The definitions I cited above centre on a tendency to prohibit or criticise the doing of things save in certain older manners or forms. They do not centre on knowing the difference between derivations. There are two points here. First, the (only sensible, so far) definition of folk music is one of derivation not form or style although some authorities do cite matters of style or form (in particular formulaic expression, and some aspects of the use of modes if you believe that modes exist rather than being choices of notes in a scale) as indicating probable derivation. Second the interaction between the correct use of the expression "folk music" and the word "purist" depends on what is sought to be prohibited or criticised. Int he examples given above there are two main strands of criticism or prohibition.

The first type of prohibition or criticism is that a work is not "folk" (or as in the case of the Singers' Club part of the community of the singer). The furthest anyone has gone on this thread is Jim, and he has not suggested that a song should be banned from any assembly merely because it was not folk. On the contrary, although he admits all folk song (although I wonder how far I'd get in County Clare with some "traditional" British Army songs if I knew any) he also admits "folk-alike" songs that are stylistically close enough. Possibly Bob Copper might have gone further.

We may therefore conclude that we cannot find an example of anyone who seeks to exclude works that are not "folk". There remain, then, only those who seek to exclude for matters of style or form (including "you're doing it wrong" and "those aren't the right words").

That conceivably does fall within the core of the definitions I gave. I've never had anyone tell me, although I do get told that I do some things differently from typical renditions, that I shouldn't do it my way. I know someone who claims to have been firmly glared at by Bob Copper for doing "The Cuddy Wren" with a guitar, but perhaps Bob just didn't like the way the guitar was being played (OK, that's tongue in cheek in case the person is reading this).

The evidence on that would seem to be that although such people do exist, they are rare, but more particularly that their objections are nothing to do with whether something is folk music. So can we leave horses out?

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Jul 11 - 04:35 AM

"and then displaying all the traits discussed in this thread isn't answering anything"
Don't suppose you'd care to give me any examples of which particular stereotype I fit into and why.
I love and have always encouraged accompanied songs - hardly an indication of "purism".
I've always argued that it is important to continue making songs using folk forms, otherwise the genre will stagnate. The most well known of our residents wrote far more contemporary songs than any singer/songwriter I know, which range from ones that are regularly mistaken for traditional, to those which are sung world-wide, including one that made number one (twice) in the charts (and his fortune).
After half a century I have come to accept a definition which fits the music I have been listening to for most of my life, and which also fits the information we have been given by the traditional singers we have intervied over the last thirty-odd years - no need to take my word on this; the interviews are freely availably for access in the British Library if you are in the UK and in a couple of archives in Ireland if you happen to be passing.
It is the music that fits into that definition that I have thought worthwhile listening to, performing and making accessible to wider audiences - the success of that music here in Ireland seems to prove that, in spite of the sneers and the name-calling, it hasn't anywhere near reached the end of its shelf-life yet.
I was interested to see that the traditional music event which has been occupying my time lately, The Willie Clancy Summer School (a 39 year-old, week-long annual feast of music classes, song workshops, lectures, exhibitions, recitals and jam-packed pub sessions, topped off with a concert of Irelands finest traditional singers and musicians), made page two of The Irish Times yesterday while the Oxegen knees-up at Puncherstown only made page seven - where did we go wrong, I wonder?      
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 10 Jul 11 - 05:24 AM

each individual word I used was traditional and the grammatical structures I used likewise.

By jove I think he's beginning to get it! We use language as Innocently as the Elliots once used Folk Song, but each and every one of us is a master of it - able to compose entire sentences as quick as we can say them. Thing is, we might not be aware of such Linguistic terms of noun-phrase or bi-labial fricative but that doesn't mean we can't use them; we might even be aware of Grimms Law or which words we use are Romance or whatever, but that doesn't effect or ability to use them in a sentence.

for example there was some years ago a South American composer who decided to break the octave down into 64 intervals rather than 12.

Feast your eyes, ears & intellect on the music of Harry Partch, who using Pythagorean theory divided the octave into 43. The reason he did this? 1) to more accurately reflect the inflections of human speach patterns which (he felt) had come adrift in Western Music traditions (Opera in particular) and 2) so he might use Perfect intervals in his music rather than (say) the compromised thirds of the tempered scale. Now Musical Maverick he may have been, but in every aspect of his work Partch was drawing heavily on tradition, even the tradition of musical outsider eccentricity in which he might sit alongside such philosophical innovators as Sun Ra and Moondog - both of whom were ultra-traditionalists when it came to the core of their thinking and compositional approaches and allegiances - as was Harry Partch, whose music was the direct creative consequence of that which preceded it just as all musics are in terms of pure process and tradition which is why Partch is an integral figure in the Tradition of New World Classical music.

Even the story about Karpeles allegedly saying that a person was not a folk singer because he had been educated involves a probably malicious slight

The Karpeles story was related on one of these threads by the singer themselves. Not sure which thread it was now (1954 and all That?) but they offered it in the context of a wider discussion on Karpeles and her ideas regarding Folk Purity. The discintion of Folk Songer / Folksong Singer is always going to a weird one, given that the Elliots only became Folk Singers when Ewan MacColl told them they were. The rest of us have elected to be Folksong Singers on account of our enthusiasms for the idiom, and for the essential respect for the old innocent singers thereof (one wonders if the Elliots were still Folk Singers when they became aware that they were?) However, there are Revival Traditions which in themselves can be the source of a Purist Snobbery which we all might be prone to...

For example only yesterday we met up with old friends in MCR and consequently I was rather pished by the time we made it into Fopp where, inebriated into Steamfok nostalgia (or whatever) I bought the 3 CDs by the John Renbourn Group earlier mentioned in my Steamfolk thread. Playing Maid in Bedlam in the car on the way home I remembered once hearing a woman singing Black Waterside as Jacqui Mcshee sings it on that recording - with the la-la-las and all. My God, I almost choked on my pint, but such sloppy sourcing is no cause for derision, surely? Her idea of Folk was singing Jacqui McShee songs; she also sang Cruel Sister to the tune of Lay the Bent to the Bonny Broom, and once complained at me for singing her song to the wrong words when I sang Lay the Bent as given in the Northumbrian Minstelsy (Child #1). Was I purist for advising her to be more dilligent in sourcing her rep? Hmmm... Guilty as charge m'lud... The shame, the shame...

*

I notice on one of the John Renbourn Group CDs they sing a translation of Machaut's Douce Dame Jolie by one Anne Lister. Is that 'our' Anne Lister? I know she has a background in medieval studies. Very nice it is too, but maybe the purist would rather hear it sung as Machaut intended? That's the thing with the tradition of New Testament Revival Folk - it's been done in so many ways the whole notion of purism becomes laughable - and yet, and yet...

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 10 Jul 11 - 05:51 AM

But none of that makes the sentence traditional nor the tune we compose traditional. That is so obvious that it must undermine any bona fides that your argument might otherwise have.

Your distortion of the impact of the application of a term to the Elliots is likewise contumelious.

I have no respect for your arguments, or your irrelevancies, although I am mildly gratified to see that you are trying to understand the difference between a folksinger and a folksong singer. That in itself appears to indicate that you might actually know what folksong is and so that your sesquipedalian arguments are not bona fide.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 10 Jul 11 - 06:42 AM

But none of that makes the sentence traditional nor the tune we compose traditional.

As I say, The Tradition is the stuff that songs are made on, not the songs themselves which are but the consequence of that tradition. For any tradition to live those songs exist as fluid consequences of the creative processes and conventions which are its life and soul.

That is so obvious that it must undermine any bona fides that your argument might otherwise have.

Obvious as a convention but only in a canonical sense. We have the Canon of Folk Song as given to us by the Old Testament Revival and the collectors thereof, but those songs are only a bunch of random samples from the Tradition that made them, they are not the Tradition in and of themselves. Those collected songs are but snap-shots, mere stills and glimpses isolated from the fluidity of musical process, and imperfect ones at that.

Your distortion of the impact of the application of a term to the Elliots is likewise contumelious.

Only in respect of Folk Heresy I'm sure.

I have no respect for your arguments, or your irrelevancies,

Likewise I'm sure.

although I am mildly gratified to see that you are trying to understand the difference between a folksinger and a folksong singer.

I'm running with the Revival Convention of such matters anyway, otherwise in the broader scheme of universal musical creativity it doesn't mean that much to me other than the Old Folk Singers are generally more fun to listen to than the New Ones. Old Testament Folk Song - be it Harry Cox or Phil Tanner or Alfred Deller or Jack Langstaff or John Jacob Niles or Seamus Ennis - have something else going on which is largely absent from the New Testament MOR approach; at least to my ears anyway. Of course there are exceptions - Jim Eldon, Peter Bellamy, Mike Waterson, Dave Peters et al. So in many ways the distinction is purely an aesthetic one, though I will always consider Context as a crucial factor - so someone like (say) Davie Stewart becomes a hero for me, but in the same sense the others do too - Bellamy, Eldon... In terms of Pure Music though, those distinctions don't really bother me in the slightest.

That in itself appears to indicate that you might actually know what folksong is

What it actually shows that I know what YOU think a Folk Song is and what The Colonial Revival thinks a Folk Song is. I'm well acquainted with the conventions, orthodoxies and the canons of The Revival but I don't agree with the conclusions, much less that other songs sung by the Old Singers can't be considered Folk Songs, nor, for that matter, why many songs sung by New Singers CAN and, indeed ARE. After all, athiests can be Theologists too.

and so that your sesquipedalian arguments are not bona fide.

Damn right they are, all the more so because I love and sing this stuff too. In essence I'm a passionate folky for whom the Old Songs & Ballads represent a pinacle of artistic achievement in all their glorious diversity. To see them reduced to MOR easy-listening mush for a elite minority of baby-boomers breaks my heart. I think this goes back to first hearing June Tabor sing Plains of Waterloo in the same gig as The Band Played Smalzting Matilda (certainly they're both on the same record). Maybe I was 14 or so at the time, but in instantly loving the former I instantly despised the latter, and I still do, and can't see why the two should ever be associated. Still, each to their own, eh?

S O'P (for Purist, acknowledging the Joys of Folk Analysis)

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 10 Jul 11 - 07:04 AM

You substitute an invented term "old songs and ballads" for the correct one "folk song". That adds nothing and loses much since it loses the correlation between folk song and folk music on the one hand and folk arts and folklore generically on the other. Schmaltzy Matilda (I like the coinage) is a fine song in its own way and there's nothing inherently evil in singing it - and if your own arguments are right then it is a traditional song. Reductio ad absurdum.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Howard Jones
Date: 10 Jul 11 - 07:21 AM

Suibhne, your argument that all music is traditional, whilst I can understand it, is not helpful to this discussion. You know full well what I mean by "traditional" in this context.

Your statement that defining folk is "as easy as ABC, elementary musicology" flies in the face of everything you've said on this thread and elsewhere. Besides, you are the one who has consistently berated academics and collectors for their lack of understanding. And

Despite this you yourself see everything in terms of an academic definition - because folk is the Music of the People, what is termed "folk music" should embrace whatever music The People now enjoy. This completely disregards that the purpose of folk clubs is to present a particular type of music, not to be an extension of folkloric or ethnomusicological studes. In this they are no different from other music venues, be they jazz clubs, rock venues or classical concert halls. It is not being "purist" (at least not in the derogatory sense) to expect that someone wishing to perform at a folk club should play folk music, or something close to it.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Will Fly
Date: 10 Jul 11 - 07:27 AM

someone wishing to perform at a folk club should play folk music, or something close to it

Hah. The McGuffin, around which all Mudcat discussions of folk tend to revolve endlessly.