Do purists really exist?

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 04:06 AM

It was not much of a point M. Sorry.

There are a number of songs about WW1 that are written from a modern perspective, that suggest the soldiery lacked any understanding of what they were fighting for and that there was no cause anyway.
I do regard EBs songs as falling into that category, is all I was trying to say.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: theleveller
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 03:52 AM

Just got back from a phenomenal weekend of folk, roots and acoustic at Moonbeams Wold Top Folk Festival high up in the Yorkshire Wolds. Here performers across a wide age spectrum played to a lively audience with a similar age profile. "Pure" folk it may not have been but it was pure enjoyment. Much of the audience and many of the performers were local and the "sense of place" was brilliant (even the beer was brewed on the premises).

This was certainly not folk that needed an iron lung to keep it alive as you can see if you have a listen to these 4 amazing teenagers:

4 Square

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 03:52 AM

It's story is told in first person Michael.===

Yes; beginning with an old man saying 'when I was a young man', and relating his present perspective on the long-past events. Nothing to do with the perspective people had at the time of the events: tho I can't see they would have had more than one probable 'perspective' on losing their legs & wishing they had died instead, at that.

I am afraid I just cannot grasp your point here at all.

~M~

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 03:46 AM

Although it does make the narrator a surviving veteran.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 03:43 AM

It's story is told in first person Michael.
Your challenge could fairly be made aginst my mention of No Man's Land.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 03:24 AM

Keith: I think you have misrepresented the perspective of Band Played... "that barely existed at the time of the events". The song is surely retrospective, not viewed from from POV of when the events occurred.

~M~

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 03:16 AM

Like No Man's Land, TBPWM is a brilliantly written song in the style of the tradition.
My objection to both is that they are written as if putting words into the mouths of those about whom they are written.
They re-write history from a perspective that barely existed at the time of the events.

You can argue that individuals may have held such views, but not that they were at all representative.

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

"and pretty damn hardline......"
Such stuff as dreams are made on!!
As a long time supporter and organiser, occasional resident and regular visitor to the Singers Club from the late 60s to Ewan's death in 1989, certainly hardly ever missing a club night in the 70s, this is the first time I have heard that Loudon Wainright ever went near the Singers Club - Dylan maybe, but that was earlier.
MacColl and Seeger individually wrote more songs than anybody else in the revival.
They regularly appealed for new songs at the club and issued those they were given in 20 editions of Singers Club sponsored 'New City Songster', edited by Peggy, between 1969 and 1984.
After Ewan's death Peggy published two selections of songs they had written, one of around 200 of Ewans and another 150 of her own.
Along with accompaniment classes and seminars, they ran regular songwriting classes.
If they were such dyed-in-the-wool traditionalists, they had an extremely weird way of going about it, doncha think?
I can't think of one individual singer, club or organisation that went to anything like the trouble to promote the making of new songs; can you?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 02:25 AM

"a fecking dreadful piece of mawkish tripe" ...

"I'm not a great fan of political songwriting "

Sweeney on TBPWM.
,,,,
Trouble is, Sean, you will undermine your case by gross hyperbolic overstatement, then climbing down in a shake of a lamb's tail when challenged ~~ see above. Sabotages all the possible effect of your verbosity.

Then

=="Please note though, my dislike of TBPWM is purely personal and has little bearing on this present Sunday sub-discussion much less the thread as a whole.
Now, what were we talking about again? "==

you climb down further by declaring what you have said irrelevant anyhow and trying to change the subject.

It won't do, you know. I mean, dash it, it just won't do!

Regards

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Brian
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 01:22 AM

My smug purist days came to an end one evening at the Singers' Club in London in the 70s - run by Ewan and Peggy, and pretty damn hardline on the subject of traditional music and sing-what-you-know - when Loudon Wainright III sang 'Dead Skunk In the Middle Of the Road' and got an ovation and two encores...

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 10 Jul 11 - 06:34 PM

It doesn't tell a story so much as labour a point. There is a world of difference. POW tells a story; whereas TBPWM negates the narrative completely by miring it in meaning. I'm not a great fan of political songwriting - I love Robert Wyatt, but when he gets political I switch off. Please note though, my dislike of TBPWM is purely personal and has little bearing on this present Sunday sub-discussion much less the thread as a whole.

Now, what were we talking about again?

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 10 Jul 11 - 05:16 PM

it was only coming to Lancashire and hearing all the other myriad approximations of musical styles that were performed in the name of Folk over here (as well as the geral disinterest in Old Songs and Ballads) that made me realise I had to loosen up or else go insane. In the end, I chose the latter option

Hmmm...

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 10 Jul 11 - 05:14 PM

Bullying? It tells a story from a point of view (as do many of the Irish Republican songs that I hate). What's your problem?

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 10 Jul 11 - 04:44 PM

But Sean, I believe you stake some claims to be an original maker.

Not really - at least not songs anyway; I sing Old Traddy Folk Songs and that's about it, though I did make a song called Porcupine in October Sycamore which can listen to (and read about) HERE, though I doubt it'll appeal to anyone on Mudcat.

My main objection to The Band Played WM is the bullying sentiment of the thing and the assumption that we all must agree with those sentiments. I like stories without an agenda, or just a bunch of images, or both. This is one of my reasons for liking the Old Songs, which usually I'm quite happy to call Traditional Folk Songs / Ballads out of deference to convention but not credo. My reasons for loving these songs is as much aesthetic as it is social, and consequently I favour those Folk Clubs where they dominate to the point of exclusivity.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: BTNG
Date: 10 Jul 11 - 04:30 PM

Do purists really exist?

like legends, only in their own minds

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Jul 11 - 04:29 PM

"and some pretend it still is. "
Perhaps you - or somebody would like to explain exactly what being "a purist" is and what we should be doing to become "impure" in order to satisfy those who obviously disapprove of us doing what we do - no luck so far, but here's hoping.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Continuity Jones
Date: 10 Jul 11 - 04:14 PM

Folk is like tomatoes. Tomatoes struggle to grow in the wild in most countries, but do ok if they're propagated and covered and watered and tendered. They're quite good fun to do, but not real wild tomatoes. Folk music today is like that. It's a long way from the real wild tomato that people claim it once was and some pretend it still is. Some people like to propagate and protect and water and tender and pretend they're wild tomatoes and others like to buy tins of Heinz Tomato Soup.

I hope that has made it clear.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: The Sandman
Date: 10 Jul 11 - 12:30 PM

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.   
excellent news jim

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 10 Jul 11 - 11:28 AM

Have you all nae heard of Archie Plum?
Who did muckle talking through his bum....

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Jul 11 - 10:46 AM

As you know, I don't think the DIY argument ['it's better than you could do anyway'] holds any water: Dr Johnson on tables applies [google it if you don't know it].

But Sean, I believe you stake some claims to be an original maker. So let me know when you have come up with anything ·00001% as god as "The Band Played...'; and, yowzer, will I ever be impressed.

Regards

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 10 Jul 11 - 09:31 AM

Oh, there goes "find the lady" again.

You brought the issue of "what is folk" in in place of "what is a purist". Now you want to talk about "what is old". In this context, because the discussion had diverted to the folkish essence in purism the CORRECT term is "folk song": otherwise you are changing horses in midstream.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 10 Jul 11 - 08:07 AM

You substitute an invented term "old songs and ballads" for the correct one "folk song".

There is no correct here, only to the fundamentalist. Hmmm - fundament / mentalist seems to as good a term for Anally Retentive as any, especially in this context don't you think?

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.

Have you read Trubshaw's Discovering Folklore? If not, recommend you do. It only comes unstuck (ironically) when discussing Folk Music, where he gets more hung up on content than context. Folk Arts is a deplorable term anyway - reactionary post-modernism at its worst, and quite patronising too. We had a lovely thread about it a while ago. Folklore, again, is more about outsider observation, interpretation and misunderstanding of feral events by way of containing them in academic terms and thereby reconstructing them in that image. It isseldom about what it means to the people who it, in which case there'd be nothing to write, or else too much, and the whole notion of Folklore would evaporate, as I believe it should. Folklore is either Everything Everywhere, or it is Nothing Nowhere. As a singer of Old Songs and a teller of Old Stories and lover of Old Rites and Riots, I go with the later every time!

Schmaltzy Matilda (I like the coinage) is a fine song in its own way

No it isn't, it's a fecking dreadful piece of mawkish tripe that only comes in useful for parody as in Ron Baxter's masterful Morecambe.

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.

I never said it wasn't a Traditional Song - just not an Old One; it's certainly a New Testament Folk Song, sung to the point of laboured idiomatic cliche (as you keep saying Folk is never about quality or musical preference) but I do believe its inherent evil lies in the thuggish assumption that a random smattering of listeners have to weep along with mawkish sentiments. Thing is, being a Revival in the religious sense, in my experience, they generally do.

*

PS -

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

Make no mistake, I have every respect for The Elliots, but not for the system by which they were selected and exalted. I despise the implication of Folk Purity and co-opting of select individuals and familes simply to prove a point. It's rather like Disney's cameramen driving lemmings over a cliff to substantiate a myth. In the context of their Culture and Community the Elliots remain remarkable, but only one tiny small piece of a much bigger jigsaw that is the rich and wondrous culture & musical traditions of the Durham & Northumbrian Coalfield which was my natural born home - a culture that must include everything from Tommy Armstrong to The New Blockaders.

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

Thinking about this again, I have every respect for yours.

*

Suibhne, your argument that all music is traditional, whilst I can understand it, is not helpful to this discussion.

I don't want to helpful, Howard - I'm just pointing out to the anchorites of the Folk World that there are other musics out there, each of them with equally valid claims to being Traditional.

You know full well what I mean by "traditional" in this context.

I know what Folkies mean by it - I also believe they are wrong and quite frequently miss the beauties of the songs they love owing to both a lack of understanding of cultural process and a willingness to believe othodox writ.

Besides, you are the one who has consistently berated academics and collectors for their lack of understanding.

Yes, but look at the reasons why.

This completely disregards that the purpose of folk clubs is to present a particular type of music,

No it doesn't - and chance would be a bloody fine thing if that was the case. As I keep saying, I only go to Folk Clubs to play and hear a particular type of music, but the reality is seldom so straightforward. In fact, it was only coming to Lancashire and hearing all the other myriad approximations of musical styles that were performed in the name of Folk over here (as well as the geral disinterest in Old Songs and Ballads) that made me realise I had to loosen up or else go insane. In the end, I chose the latter option, especially when we found what is now our Perfect Folk Club in the perfect pub. However in the wider context of Human Society there is more to be considered by the Folklorist Ethnographer than the interests of a minority of enthusiastic hobbyists - such as myself and every other Folkie great and small.

Off out to enjoy the day now, back later, or tomorrow, depending how we get on.

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.

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: 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: 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 - 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 - 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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,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: 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: 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: 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: 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 - 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
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,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: 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,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: 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,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: 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,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: 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: 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