Can a pop song become traditional?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 02:10 PM

"the leadership of a few traditional music lovers who made a concerted effort to do this.....but somehow they attracted many followers."

Even in vibrant traditional music cultures that never had 'folk revivals' initiated by outsiders, this seems to be the case. I don't think Cajun music would be in the rude health it seems to be, without the passionate advocacy of Dewey Balfa (himself from within the tradition, of course), Michael Doucet and others. the same is true in my experience of Quebecois music.

"DIY music making continues to be a key aspect of British culture"

I'm sure that it is, although I'd guess that it's far from universal (the only vaguely relevant figures I could find on the web reckoned that 6% of the US population owns a guitar, although that might be an underestimate). And Rob Naylor is right in saying that instruments and technology are priced within the grasp of many more people these days than formerly.

I tend to agree with Steve Gardham, when he said "we would be best treating what happens today as separate traditions from those that happened a century and more ago", which is not, of course, to say that what happens now is inferior. Also with Martin Ryan, that as far as modern songs 'becoming traditional' is concerned, it's simply too early to say. I still await the evidence that recent songs are getting passed on down the generations in the way that allowed Sheila Kay Adams to learn 'The Outlandish Knight' from her mother in North Carolina, and still be singing in 2011 a ballad known in Britain the best of 250 years previously (and much older than that in Europe), which Cecil Sharp himself noted down from Sheila Kay's great-great-Aunt Mary Sands in 1916.

Sheila Kay talks about her family and sings 'The Outlandish Knight'

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 01:05 PM

"Way too personal, Jim - I don't need the insults"
Yet you feel free to insult anybody you choose whenever it takes your fancy.
I asked if you have any evidence for your claim of "a grim nationalistic MOR pastiche of it anyway"
You obviously have not, so here you feel free to insult the music played by Irish people, young and old - please feel free to interpret 'a real pice of work' as another insult.
Jim Caroll

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Larry The Radio Guy
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 12:19 PM

I appreciate the 'passions' expressed both by Blandiver and Jim....and maybe I'm being 'wishy washy' but I see the truth in both.

But I'm fascinated with one thing Jim said that I'd love to explore further, when he talks about the revival of traditional Irish music in Irish pubs.

This seems to come close to that 'living tradition' that seems so elusive to me on this thread.

You say, Jim, that "the trad music crowd got their act together and showed that they knew the difference between Johnny B Goode and The Bucks of Oranmore and drew a clear line between the two; no compromises".

I'm curious why you think that happened? My guess that it came from the leadership of a few traditional music lovers who made a concerted effort to do this.....but somehow they attracted many followers.

Was there something specific about the 'time and place' that allowed this to happen?   

Was there somehow a melding (perhaps because of the success of the more commericial 'RiverDance" that somehow gave a legitimacy to this music that may not have happened otherwise?    Or did the strength of certain people's passion permeate into places where lesser passions could never get through?

And I'm wondering if this could be a model for bringing back other forms of traditional music in other cultures?

(I realize this question deviates a bit from the original one about whether pop music can be traditional.....but maybe not).

-Larry

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 12:02 PM

Rap eh? Well I still argue that the logical inheritor of the Unaccompanied Community Singing Tradition is Karaoke. Sure there's a backing track, but there's no actual instruments involved, which is the defining aspect of the Karaoke Tradition. That said, we passed a board outside a Blackpool pub the other day advertising 'Bandaoke' - Karaoke with a live band... Imagine that...

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 11:53 AM

JohnCharles wrote: `It is a great hobby,making music with friends,and entertaining like minded folk. The error is in trying to maintain that it is somehow central to British culture'

Saw this quoted above by another poster. I'd argue that the assertion that 'amateur music making and sharing is not central to British culture', is false. Pretty much every person I know has some kind of musical instrument. I'd say a good half of the pople I've known in my life - NOT including 'folkies' - have played some kind of (principally self-taught) instrument, the overwhelming majority being acoustic guitar, but others have included; piano, violin, djembe, concertina, viol, cello, saxophone, didgeridoo, electric bass, drums, ukelele, flute, keyboards and harp. DIY music making continues to be a key aspect of British culture, and working-class British culture at that. While acapella singing in the traditional folk sense has arguably all but disappeared from popular British culture, in it's stead there does exist a modern tradition of performing vocally without instrumental accompaniment, in the form of rap. Unlike Rob, many folkies on this board possibly tend to remain in folkie land, which is not where the majority of popular British culture is to be found; that is to be found everywhere outside of folkiebubble land.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 11:34 AM

She was actually a sweet old dear? Well, good, then.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 11:20 AM

Sounds like the typical meanness of a drunken bully. Loud and rude with an admixture of sly. I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Indeed not; she was the sweetest old dear you're ever likely to meet, the heart and soul of many a fine evening of impromptu craik, or crack as we call it the North East of England. I think her comment was to do with the over formalisation of a music which was, to her at least, second nature. Hell, even seasoned session players spoke of The Colpitts Session in hushed tones - rumour was you had to apply for an audition to play. There's several ways of looking at this - but having browsed fora like The Session where one rouitinely sees great musicians dismissed out of hand - including at least one highly respected 'Catter - I might ponder its true worth as part of the general inclusivity of the come-all-ye which remains my Folk Ideal. That way the roots are acknowledged and new singers & musicians duly nurtured.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 11:07 AM

Way too personal, Jim - I don't need the insults, not from you or anyone else. All I'm doing is a little generalising with respect of how Folk works in terms of its own agendas and notions of Tradition one one hand & Heritage on the other, assuming the two things aren't conflated. Which is fine, but there's still a cut off point between the one thing and the other, Pre & Post Revival, and all that implies.

Real Music, on the other hand, is that which exists regardless of state-funded agendas or prescriptive revival. Real Music thrives & evolves according to the deeper needs of humanity than that which first perceives then consciously preserves any given tradition. In Real Music, tradition just happens anyway, though the participants probably wouldn't think of it as such. I think that much is self-evident - so please, don't take it so personally if I point it out, I don't mean it as an insult.

The value of Revival Folk Music is beyond calculation, but it has its limits, and those limits are, one would have thought, what this thread is all about.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 10:49 AM

"...one of the old Irish regulars came in, took one listen and proclaimed: 'Holy Mary Mother of God! It's Riverdance night!' and turned on her heel and left."

Sounds like the typical meanness of a drunken bully. Loud and rude with an admixture of sly. I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 10:32 AM

"Well a grim nationalistic MOR pastiche of it anyway"
Do you have any evidence for this?
You seem to be totally incapable of accepting that anything positive can be happening with traditional music without your putting your own nasty twist to it.
The Willie Clancy Summer School, has been the greatest single influence on Irish music was started forty years ago with tutors and lecturers such as Seamus Ennis, Tom McCarthy, Bobby Casey, Breandan McGlinchy... and a whole host of earlier generation musicians who taught youngsters., Breathnach, Peoples, Glackin, John Kelly, Johnny O'Leary.   
Tom McCarthy's family is now into the third generation of playing superb Irish music and this town has young people who cut their teeth here are now teachers themselves.
Willie Clancy, who you claim to admire, has been a major influence in the development here.
You strike me as one of the most unpleasent (begrudgers is the word they use here) when it comes to giving credit, in this case to many thousands of kids who have taken up traditional music and are making it work using traditional forms.
I look forward to an explanation (in plain English if possible) as to why you describe what is happening as "a grim nationalistic MOR pastiche" othewise, I serious suggest you seek an attitude implant, the present one seems to have deteriorated beyond salvation.
Personally, I put it down to a bad case of inferiority complex - you really do come over as a thoroughly nasty piece of work.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 05:35 AM

The end result is that Irish traditional music will survive and thrive for at least two more generations.

Well a grim nationalistic MOR pastiche of it anyway. I'm reminded of an old Irish travelling musician I once sat in a session with in Tyneside back in the mid 1980s who left when the company started up with Simon Jeffe's Music for a Found Harmonium.
'You okay?' said I.
'It's not music anymore - it's just notes.' said he.

I remember another Irish session, in Durham at The Colpitts, very studied, earnest and famed for the sort of dazzling po-faced ultra-slick muso virtuosity that now typifies the genre. I was rapidly losing the will to live through in the other bar when one of the old Irish regulars came in, took one listen and proclaimed: 'Holy Mary Mother of God! It's Riverdance night!' and turned on her heel and left.

That said, I could listen to Seamus Ennis, Felix Doran & Willie Clancy all day - and very often do.

Me, I'm just happy that formula-free feral Human Traditional Music will survive and thrive as long as there are people on planet earth to play it, and will do so regardless of the prescriptions of Folk on what constitutes Traditional or Folk or whatever. All the Ethnomusicologist has to do is just sit back and rejoice at the reality of it all; just as the linguist rejoices in the living reality of language and the ethnologist in the living reality of cultural diversity. Folk will always be seen as risable & reactive by the majority of the population who are way too busy getting on with the realities of life, and music, to care about anything other than pure creative joy of doing it.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 04:42 AM

Ah, Edward Thomas. What a great poet. 'Adlestrop' must be one of the finest accounts of that sort of mystic experience we all have now and then, the feeling that there is a sort of profound thought somewhere just beyond where our mind can reach, if only we could just think what it was.

And is there any other poem which says so much in just a few lines as -

In Memoriam: Easter 1915

The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood
This Eastertide call into mind the men,
Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should
Have gathered them and will do never again.

~M~

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: MartinRyan
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 04:16 AM

I can go out in this one-street town and hear good music well played in our local pubs 4 or 5 nights a week, some nights having to choose between pubs.


Choose between pubs? Such hardship! ;>)>

As to the thread topic: the only sensible answer is surely " Seems unlikely - but come back in a hundred years time and ask me again!"

Regards

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: theleveller
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 04:11 AM

"our `culture' (officially at least, in the form of state-funded grants from the Arts Council etc) is largely made up of Italian opera and Russian/French ballet. We have a lot of culture of our own which is not so supported. I just wonder what the level of interest might be throughout the country if there was a modicum of support?
"

I really don't want to get into a debate about what our culture is - that way madness lies - but, as someone who never goes to the ballet or opera, off the top of my head I would say that it's the music of Elgar and Vaughan William and, increasingly, the work of those wonderful poets who so beautifully evoke our heritage, landscape, people and 'sense of place',in particular, Wordsworth, Clare, W H Davies and Edward Thomas whose poem 'Haymaking' I scarcely go a day without reading - in fact, a copy of his Selected Poems is an almost constant companion. The popularity of these poets seems to be having a resurgence, especially amongst the modern crop of nature and topographical writers such as Robert Macfarlane.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 04:05 AM

"....as it would almost certainly trap everything in art aspic."
Not necessarily
Up to compariavely recently Irish music was a poor relation - banned in many pubs, sneered at by the media as 'diddly-di music' and apart from one influential body, Comhaltas (CCE) totally devoid of establishment support.
The 70s and 80s brought a tremendous upturn in fortune; a magnificent traditional archive was established in Dublin, a week long music school, teaching all traditional instruments, with lectures, recitals, concerts and wall-to-wall sessions was held in West Clare (still thriving after 40 years) and youngsters flocked to the music in their thousands. You couldn't, and still can't turn your television and radio on without hearing traditional music in one form or other, academic and performance, of traditional music.., I stress that was 'music', song still has some way to go, but it is infinitely more healthy than it is in the UK
I can go out in this one-street town and hear goodmusic well played in our local pubs 4 or 5 nights a week, some nights having to choose between pubs.
This is still very much the case today, despite the downturn in the economy.
Applications for grants for both performance and research were pushing on an open door - we managed to get an extremely generous one for work on our Irish Traveller collection.
At no time did the grant givers or the arts or political establishment attempt to interfere with the nature of the work that was being applied for, the only condition being that you showed that you were doing what you said you were doing.
The secret of this success was that the trad music crowd got their act together and showed that they knew the difference between Johnny B Goode and The Bucks of Oranmore and drew a clear line between the two; no compromises.
The end result is that Irish traditional music will survive and thrive for at least two more generations.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: banksie
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 03:13 AM

JohnCharles wrote: `It is a great hobby,making music with friends,and entertaining like minded folk. The error is in trying to maintain that it is somehow central to British culture and feeling depressed when the vast majority no not share this view.'

I'd agree with most of that except to maybe question why we shouldn't feel a little depressed when our `culture' (officially at least, in the form of state-funded grants from the Arts Council etc) is largely made up of Italian opera and Russian/French ballet. We have a lot of culture of our own which is not so supported. I just wonder what the level of interest might be throughout the country if there was a modicum of support?

And I am also aware that there is a huge downside to such `state support' as it would almost certainly trap everything in art aspic. But I am trying to think of other countries that turn their collective back so vehemently against their own musical and dance heritage. Mybe we need a diaspora to kick it off?

And for what its worth I have most certainly been called a snob for preferring folk music - and not just by kids. But it can be fun at the obligatory disco at a family wedding or whatever to throw in some morris double stepping - it works well with a lot of disco music - and see kids suddenly start to join in as it is `different'. Then tell them they have been morris dancing. Some faces can be quite entertaining at that point.....and at subsequent discos I have seen them continue to do it, all by themselves.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 07:35 PM

Many Trinidadians can apparently sing the chorus of "Jean and Dinah" composed in 1956, or even the whole song, starting from "Well, the girls in town feelin' bad, there's no more Yankees in Trinidad.."
(I'm not Trinidadian, but I know the whole song. And when I become a calypsonian and if I ever have kids, I'll sing it to them. In fact, I might start teaching it to my cousins.)

In Rob's definition, "Jean and Dinah" is a folk song.

And now it's in my head. I'm still singing "Jean and Dinah, Rosita and Clementina,
Round the corner posin',
Bet your life is somethin they sellin'..."

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 07:29 PM

Steve, There have been several attempts on here to define what "traditional" means. Not sure there'll ever be a consensus, and you're right, the question is complex, and I agree that it's not about the provenence. But I *have* seen people arguing here that if authorship is known ,then it's not "trad", so was just pre-empting that faction in my post above.

It wasn't *my* question though! I was actually just trying to get the thread back on track a bit as it seems to have deteriorated well away from the OP's question, into personal sniping and squabbling about semantics. Which may be rivetting for the 3-4 people actually involved in the exchanges, but is deadly boring to me, and, I suspect, others.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 06:35 PM

Rob,
No-one with any basic knowledge of the tradition nowadays believes that knowing the origin of the song has any relevance at all to the oral tradition. The oral tradition is concerned solely with transmission, not origin, and rightly so IMO. How can a song be traditional one day and the next not be just because we discovered Martin Parker wrote it in 1652 or Harry Clifton in 1860 etc.?

The word 'traditional' can be applied to almost anything that is handed down, whether altered or not. Alteration is a characteristic, not a prescription. 'Rule Britannia' is very much part of several traditions including oral tradition, but it seldom gets altered. In its original form it's not a 'folk song' but it does form part of some folk songs.

The answer to your question is a complex one. Perhaps you need to define what your concept of 'traditional' is.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 06:27 PM

We can see how all sorts of music is taken to the hearts of all sorts of communities as an esential part of their lives, culture & identity.

Surely that's enough?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 06:20 PM

Brian: I was fascinated by the account of guitarists in Sakhalin playing 'Hotel California' (how our world has shrunk!) but you are talking about guitarists - a small percentage of any population - rather than unaccompanied singers. The whole point about the singing tradition, or whatever we choose to call it, is that it was open to anyone, not just people with the money to afford an instrument and the time to practise it...

I understand what you're getting at, but only partly agree. At that pub there were only 4 instruments in the room. But as I pointed out, at least a dozen people joined in with the singing, many of them not involved with those of us playing. They were just singing along, and did so to any song they recognised when we started to play it. Even the (20 year old) barmaid knew it and joined in.

I was at a BMF barbecue a few weeks back and similary (the only instrument there) just noodled the intro to "Wish You Were Here..." following which a whole group of the (mainly late 20s to early 30s) attendees started singing it.

This happens a lot among the people I socialise with...and a relatively small part of my socialising is with "musos". Mostly I socialise with climbers, mountaineers and with runners/ British Military Fitness (BMF) groups.

I agree that there's very little spontaneous acapella singing outside singarounds these days, but I suspect that this is largely because instruments have become so much more affordable. Looking back to my teenage years, when I was earning £5.00 a week in a pop factory, the cheapest guitar that was remotely playable was about £25, or 5 weeks wages. My daughter got a perfectly playable low-end Yamaha for just over half her first full week's wages working in a cafe. As I've said several times, almost every one of my kids' friends have instruments. Most of them are not musical or from particularly musical families, and the majority only know half a dozen chords, and play rarely, but the instruments are there.

Thinking of the houses in our street, except for next door on the right (the one attached to ours...poor sod has to listen through the wall but can't get any retaliation in!) every house for at least 5 either side, and all the ones across the street that I can see from our door, contains at least one guitar. And none of these neighbours go to sessions, singarounds or open mics. They just have guitars.

So I suspect the lack of unaccompanied singing isn't down to the fact that people aren't passing on songs, but to the fact that the zeitgeist we're in at present associates singing with accompaniment, instruments being affordable for a much larger proportion of the population than previously.

The original question in this thread, as posted by Larry, was: So.......can a song that was written and defined as a pop song or 'rock 'n roll' ever become considered traditional. And, if so, what would it take? And finally.....any examples of songs that have met this (or are meeting this) criteria?

And I'll stand by my initial point that a fair number of pop or rock songs that are 40-60 years old have now passed down through 1 or even 2 generations and some are on their way to becoming "traditional" in the sense that they'll be sung and remembered down the generations without people necessarily knowing their provenence. Of course, they won't become "traditional" in the sense that the original composers will be unknown (barring a catastropic collapse of civilisation as we know it!) but the way the original post was phrased didn't specify how "trad" should be defined.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 04:06 PM

Thanks for that John -
All new to me
Best,
Jim Czzzzzzzz

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: johncharles
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 03:15 PM

Tiredness is a result of lack of adequate sleep caused by sleep apnoea disturbing normal sleep.
sleep apnoea
john

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 02:38 PM

Set in ezzzzzzzz
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 01:46 PM

Is that 'lol' on the end intentional, Jim? Or has the apn(0)ea set in early tonight? Apologies in advance.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 12:39 PM

Whatever
Jim Carrolol

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 11:54 AM

You don't do that; you criticise people for trying; you slag people of for what you think they are because they bother to make an effort, and you offer nothing in return

Not true, I'm simply accounting for a condition as I've understood it these past 40 years. It's just the way it is - simples. I'm not criticising any one individual, just pointing out what seems wonky to my sensitivities that's all.

If researchers got it wrong, tell them what they should have done to get it right.

This a weird one because in an ideal world there would have been no researchers and the old culture would have died away with dignity as the new replaced it. Maybe in an ideal world you wouldn't have had the schisms of social class that gave rise such a cultural apartheid in the first place, much less one that ultimately destroyed the human & natural ecology of the British Countryside in so spectacular a fashion, creating the sort of post-war housing estate ghettoes in which many of us were brought up and which have their modern counterpart in Blairite Blandness that blights greenfields at every turn. Maybe there would have been no need for The Revival because things would have kept going, ever evolving as they had been for centuries. Whatever the case, there's no way The Revival could have happened without the entrenched social-caste system we have in the UK & that I got pulled into at an early age. 40 years on it is very much a part of what I am, but I'm under no illusions as to its nature - nor yet to its value as a means of experiencing & creating Truly Great Music, be it Traditional or Revival. I listen in tears to Joseph Taylor singing Brigg Fair in Percy Grainger's 1903 wax cylinder recording - that's how real this music is for me.

*

Whilst I'm on here's a recording I made of Ross Campbell singing his setting of Rob Baxter's Braiding accompanying himself on anglo - a vignette of life in a fishing town in the 1960s. It's not Traditional, but it's idiomatically Folk and the very pip besides.

Braiding - Ross Campbell

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 11:46 AM

John, I see nothing to disagee with in your last post. It certainly isn't central to current British Culture, but IMO it certainly should be central to British social history.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 11:18 AM

"Jim - just reporting on what I see to be the case."
No you're not - you're doing what you always do.
I was in the Critics Group until it disappeared - I loved every minute of it; the idea that people cared enough to discuss and criticise my singing and suggest how it might be improved still gives me a buzz.
You don't do that; you criticise people for trying; you slag people of for what you think they are because they bother to make an effort, and you offer nothing in return
I'm not a fetishist, neither am I one of the crypto religious, nor one of the social priveleged - or any of the shit you've poured over researchers/collectors when you've had the opportunity.
I really have got nothing against honest, positive criticism; I was one of those who were delighted when Harker was doing a critique of the early collectors - jesus - what a letdown - a hitlist of every collector who didn't toe the party line, followed by The Hidden Village - a tilt at self constructed windmills. You fit in perfectly between the two, except you've never put finger to keyboard long enough commit yourself in a big way.
Your saving grace in the past has been that the pretentious language you present your snides in has made you somewhat of a parody (sort-of winebuffese writ large) and raised the occasional grin, but even that's wrn thin now and just comes over as nastiness.   
If researchers got it wrong, tell them what they should have done to get it right.
Discuss and criticise what they/we do, not what we are for trying.
Give us a break
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 11:14 AM

Deja vu strikes again.....and again.....!

I seem to remember, even with my senility, at a similar point in previous discussions chipping in that we would be best treating what happens today as separate traditions from those that happened a century and more ago. Yes they have similarities, but they also have drastic differences.

The Everlasting Circle, isn't that a folk song?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: johncharles
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 10:52 AM

Sales of folk music in the UK last year were up 20% from 2010.

The success of Brit Award winning Laura Marling as well as the likes of the US musician Gillian Welch are behind the boost in sales.

According to the British Phonographic Industry, despite the huge lift in sales, folk music still only accounted for 1.6% of album sales in the UK in 2011. Other artists which helped boost folk music sales were Bellowhead and Daniel O'Donnell.
I guess that the more "traditional" end of the spectrum accounts for only a small fraction of these sales.
Folk is a minority occupation to pretend otherwise is self-delusion.
It is a great hobby,making music with friends,and entertaining like minded folk. The error is in trying to maintain that it is somehow central to British culture and feeling depressed when the vast majority no not share this view. John

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 10:52 AM

"repetition = tradition"

I'm with Jim on this one. Neil Armstrong's famous words "one small step for a man, etc." are replayed endlessly and are recognizable to millions, but that doesn't make them traditional, nor folklore. If, on the other hand, I were to take a hypothetical young son out on a regular walk involving some treacherous stepping stones, each time encouraging him to be bold with the words, "It's just one small step for a man", and, twenty years in the future, he were to encourage his own son with the same phrase, then it would have become folklore, at least on the family level.

Further up the thread, Stim asks me to provide 'hard evidence' of my previous argument that modern songs are unlikely to become traditional in the way that songs of the 18th century did. Leaving aside the temptation to point out that Mudcat is a place where everyone else bandies around personal opinions without feeling the need for the slightest corroboration, I would say this. Presumably, Stim, you're not asking for hard evidence of the transmission of what I would call traditional songs? If you were, there's plenty available, from biographical booklets accompanying CDs of traditional singers released by Topic, Musical Tradtions, Veteran etc., to the aforementioned New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs, to Bob Copper's A Song for Every Season, to the personal account of Carrie Grover, etc. etc.

If, on the other hand, you're asking me to demonstrate that songs no longer get passed on (always difficult to prove a negative!), well I'm sorry, but I'm not about to undertake a scientific survey for the sake of a Mudcat discussion. However, what I'm saying is based partly on personal, local and anecdotal experience, partly on the kind of press stories we hear from time to time regarding the decline in parents singing to their children. Like these, trawled from a very quick Google search:

Nursery rhymes out of fashion?

Shy parents afraid to sing nursery rhymes

Children don't know nursery rhymes

Your examples of people singing along at concerts or dance clubs are interesting (particularly the eight-year-old who can sing an entire album accapella), but not especially surprising: I knew by heart the lyrics to many of the records I bought in my teens (in fact I still do), and we've all seen footage of the mainstage crowd at Glastonbury singing along with Coldplay or whoever.

But the 'hard data' that you really need to provide here is that baby boomers raised in the rock'n'roll years are actually passing 1950s or 60s songs on to their offspring by singing to them (as opposed to digging out Chuck Berry videos on Youtube and saying "just listen to this great old song"). And then that those offspring remember the songs well enough to pass them on to their own kids. Or, alternatively, that the Rogers & Hammerstein songs that my parents' generation knew, have been passed orally through my generation and on to the next one. Until you can prove that, you haven't demonstrated that (relatively) modern popular songs have 'become traditional' in the way that 'Lord Bateman' did.

To Rob Naylor: You're right: 'Johnny B. Goode' isn't the greatest candidate in this discussion, not least because it depends for much of its musical interest on a driving R'n'R arrangement, the melody in itself not being especially memorable. I was fascinated by the account of guitarists in Sakhalin playing 'Hotel California' (how our world has shrunk!) but you are talking about guitarists - a small percentage of any population - rather than unaccompanied singers. The whole point about the singing tradition, or whatever we choose to call it, is that it was open to anyone, not just people with the money to afford an instrument and the time to practise it; the evidence I've seen suggests that singing was once very widespread indeed. So again we aren't comparing like with like. It's a bit like saying that traditional singing goes on, because a small community of folk music hobbyists have recreated a version of it in microcosm - and I'm with Blandiver in his opinions of that.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 10:23 AM

Tootler - it's petty little snipes like that that depress me. Either discuss it in the good spirit of the discussion, or don't bother.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Tootler
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 10:07 AM

Having just read that last post I can unerstand why Jim Carroll feels depressed

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 09:37 AM

Jim - I'm not tearing anything down just reporting on what I see to be the case. It's what Folk is - it's a verty precious specialism about which the real world couldn't give a damn one way or the other. Even most Folkies I meat couldn't give two hoots about Traditional song. I believe it's now the fashion for Folkies to call non-Folkies Muggles; whilst this is true of other specialisms too, I find it rather depressing especially when the culture of Real Venacular Popular Music Making is so vigorous in a muliplicity of idioms - even something called 'Folk' which no Folkie would ever call Folk, which goes back to Tom Wilson turning Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel onto electricity by overdubbing their music with rock music - and that's years before we get to the doldrums of UK Folk Rock.

Ultimately discussions like this on the nature of Traditional Music as hermetically sealed sacred art entirely separate from the rest of Popular Culture just serve to demonstate the extent of an elitism which is part and parcel of The Revival. Myself, I reckon that's a massive part of its appeal - like those earnest Traddies in singarounds who introduce a ballad by quoting both its Child & Roud Number. Even I refer to songs by their Child Number largely in deference to an academic tradition I'm still in awe of.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 08:12 AM

We really don't seem to have moved away from the repetition = tradition stance that has blighted all these discussions and obviously will continue to do so for some time to come.
"Folk is a subject of fetishism for a crypto-religious elite that doesn't really connect with the 'real world'"
Ten years ago, when I retired I was full of enthusism for publishing - a collection of Travellers songs maybe, or a book on Walter Pardon, and certainly an oral autobiography based on the hundred or so tapes we recorded from Mikeen McCarthy the Traveller ballad seller.
It's snideswipes such as this that have largely persuaded me that it is really not worth the effort and it would be far more beneficial to leave it all on the shelf and let posterity decide.
When this comes wrapped in verbal self-abuse aimed (as far as I can make out when I manage to cut my way through the clever-clever verbal undergrowth) at tearing down something others have done without offering a trace of your own work, it doesn't even have a great deal of entertainment value
All very depressing
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Can a pop song bJOHNecome traditional?
From: johncharles
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 07:13 AM

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
John

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 07:05 AM

Never

Well, you know my feelings on Organic Change, I Ching & The Tao. The entire universe is in flux & flow for good (we plough the fields & scatter) or ill (fast falls the eventide) so there is a tendency to dream of something that Never changes. Maybe all human art is to move against nature to ensure solidity & permanance? At Stonehenge, Avebury & Thornborough our forebears were creating order and relative permanance on a scale which was, in effect, greater than nature. Wyrd will out however, no matter how well-wrought our walls, but for a lifetime, or several lifetimes, there will be at least something that will seem everlasting even as everything changes around it.

So Time that is o'er-kind
To all that be,
Ordains us e'en as blind,
As bold as she:
That in our very death,
And burial sure,
Shadow to shadow, well persuaded, saith,
"See how our works endure!"

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 05:33 AM

Phew, such a lot of interesting stuff on this thread. I'm learning a lot.

Let's start with Blandiver's "Somethings never change; they are proudly part of the heritage of a community and simply held in trust as comfort in the face of an ever-changing world beset by death, decay, disease and general entropy, which to many is what Tradition is I suppose, i.e. an affirmation of permanance & continuity."

Beautifully put, Mr. B. Not for nothing are those communities transplanted by free will or force, to hostile environments, amongst the most fertile in terms of traditional song and music: the Acadians, expelled from the Canadian maritimes to the steaming swamps of the Deep South; the Appalachian mountaineers, trying to hack out a meagre living on poor soil, in extreme weather, cut off from 'civilization' with potential threats all around them. Perhaps you overstate slightly with the single word 'never'. Things do change even in communities like those, but nonetheless the pride in heritage remains strong. (More later)

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 04:54 AM

I grew up with my grandfather reciting everything from Kipling's Barrack Room Ballads he learned in the army in India to Tommy Armstrong songs & Geordie Broon of Backworth. Not sure if he ever changed a word, so maybe the Folk Process doesn't apply here?

Somethings never change; they are proudly part of the heritage of a community and simply held in trust as comfort in the face of an ever-changing world beset by death, decay, disease and general entropy, which to many is what Tradition is I suppose, i.e. an affirmation of permanance & continuity. Records are part of this in that they set the definitive and at least give the illusion of permanance. Frank Zappa notes that it was very much part of the tradition of bands in the late 50's / early 60s to stick as close as possible to the recorded arrangements. Those who did it best got the gigs.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: theleveller
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 04:12 AM

"it reminds me of how my father-in-law would take such pride in reciting, so passionately, certain poems like "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner". "

Interesting point Larry. My father could also recite long tracts of poetry, much of which he'd learnt from his schoolmaster's recitation at the age of 12. Funnily enough I, too, enjoy reciting those poems and many others. So does the 'folk process' apply to poetry? Good news for those who can't sing!

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 02:11 AM

I had a similar experience with that song, johncharles. At a gig, many years ago, I got "I'll bet you don't know this one", and, to their surprise, and mine, I did. I'd never played it before, nor since. It's one of those songs.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: johncharles
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 12:07 AM

I was in a music session a few weeks ago and someone sang Running Bear. I realised I knew every word even though it was 40 years since I last heard it. Give it a few more years and I will pass it on as a song learned at my mothers knee.
john

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 07:18 PM

Brian Peters: Because I've been arguing that only a tiny minority of people know even one verse of 'Johnny B. Goode', a song that's only 60-odd years old and which many of us have heard many times over on radio or TV ads.

On the other hand, there are multitudes of people who know all the verses of a song like "Hotel California" which is over 40 years old. Not only know the lyrics, but can play it, in several guitar parts, and also often add their own improvisations. Here in Sakhalin (Russian Far East) I started the 7th-fret intro in an informal singaround in a pub last Sunday and after one bar another guitarist was finger-picking the open-string chord sequence while a 3rd was strumming the same. At least a dozen people, mostly Russians, joined in with the vocals and Grisha (the finger picker) did some nice improvisation around the theme at the end.

I've seen the same happen at several open mics in England. At one in Axminster we had 6 guitars playing various parts and improvisations, and 3 female vocalists in their early 20s singing it (generation transfer).

So maybe "Johnny B Goode" is a poor choice as a "possibility"?


Those people in the 19th century and before knew and loved their songs well enough to pass them on to their kids. How many parents today are singing their children to sleep with 'Johnny B. Goode', 'Yellow Submarine' or any of the other usual candidates for 'modern folk songs'?

Not "singing them to sleep" but I'd suggest, for certain songs, a lot more than you'd think are passed on. OK, "Hotel California" may be over-done, but it's certainly been passed down at least one generation. As have songs like "Wish You Were Here"....again, something I can start in almost any "open" pub session and have 20-somethings join in with both the vocals and the guitar parts. Others in the frame would include "Streets of London", "Mr Tambourine Man" (plus several other Dylan songs), some Crosby Stills Nash and Young songs etc. I've heard several under-25s doing Bowie's "Space Oddity" recently...usually with sections of the (predominantly young) audience joining in, and knowing all the words.

And "new" songs in the "folk idiom, such as Dirty Old Town, Fiddler's Green, etc, are sung widely (often by people who believe they're "trad", and with changed words...eg most people sing "gasworks wall" rather than "gasworks croft").

So no, I don't believe "Johnny B. Goode" will ever become "trad", but I can imagine many other "pop" songs of the last 50 years still being sung and passed down through generations a hundred years from now.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 07:04 PM

Steve... I must not have allowed for all the leap years. I'll recalculate....

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 05:49 PM

Bill,
I find your assertion of '84 years, 3 months and 9 days' to be somewhat overstated. Everybody here knows it's actually 84 years, 3 months and 8 days. Please keep up!

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 05:36 PM

Somehow I missed the start of this thread...I could have saved you all this debate.

Of course pop song can become trad... it takes 84 years, 3 months and 9 days to qualify. Then someone submits it to the "Committee of Modal Folkers", who analyze it for 3 months and vote in an alley behind a random pub in England. Then they go inside, sing 3 versions, and announce it as 'trad'... then the audience throws rotten vegetables and/or nods seriously.

Over the next year, the committee's opinion (liberally paraphrased) is passed on to OTHER pubs & clubs, argued over, transmitted to America, where they have totally forgotten the original, and finally someone starts thread #2933744999336 at Mudcat, where it is linked to 984 other threads and bandied about in very clever rhetoric until it no one remembers what the question was.

Then, if some young girl finds the words in he grandfathers notebook and make a recording of it to one of the 9 Irish tunes, it magically becomes TRAD.

The process starts now.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 05:30 PM

On the topic of how the way songs are transmitted has changed, but transmission still occurs, I think may be worth reproducing this long-since post of mine on this topic. I hope its relevance to this aspect of this discussion will be apparent ~~

Subject: RE: Origins: Black Cat Piddled in the White Cat's Eye
From: MtheGM - PM
Date: 26 Sep 09 - 05:46 AM

BTW — we recently had a long thread on what was the Folk Process, or whether it even existed. Well, isn't this an example of the way it can work?

Consider - I learned a children's song in 1956 from a friend who remembered it from his early E London days. Two years later it took the fancy of Sandy Paton who became a friend while he was visiting London. Exactly 40 years later he posted it, most courteously attributed to me, as part of a thread about its tune. This thread got refreshed 10 years later, & the words caught the eye of Joy in Australia, who started this thread about it, ref-ing Sandy's 11-yr-old post. I saw this & revealed myself as Sandy's acknowledged source, & named my source;, which brought a response from Hootenanny, who comes from the same part of London, with a recognisable variant of the same song.

I mean, the Folk Process might not work quite as it did when Kidson & Gavin Greig, Sharp & the Hammonds, Moeran & RVW, were all at work. But doesn't this show that modern means of communication, like The Web e.g., have their part to play also?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 05:22 PM

Brian,
Whilst agreeing that things are changing as I said, the terrace chants have a knack of reappearing. The canned music is a damned nuisance to us, but the away fans still are very vocal at games where they're concentrated into a relatively small area. And I agree entirely that there's no point in pretending that nothing's changed. I thought that's what I was trying to say.

The carols surprise me. Apparently we don't sing in schools any more like we used to, and nor do we need to go Christmas carolling door to door like we used to as kids. These are some of the other changes, not necessarily down to rapidly expanding technology.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 04:44 PM

Speaking of "Oh Susannah", I ran into a guy about 35 years old who thought Neil Young wrote it.