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Can a pop song become traditional?
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: GUEST,Blandiver Date: 25 Aug 12 - 04:29 AM JC : Having your cake and eating it Bland? Not at all, old man. Most of what I said up there I said back on the old '1954 & All That' thread which I opened in March 2009 - certainly the remit of the ICTM, which is, I feel, crucial to the notion of just what Traditional Music is. It's certainly inclusive - huge in fact: Folk, Pop & Classical - and whilst that certainly suits the subject of this thread, it falls way outside the Folkie nuerosis that only 'their type of music' can be considered 'traditional' or 'folk processed' which is demonstrable hokum. I wonder - do the ICTM still stand by their findings as the IFCM? Or why, for that matter, they felt compelled to change the name? What was their Road to Damascus? Did you see Maud Karpeles on TV the other night? Part of a BBC Proms broadcast of the music of Vaughan Williams. I just caught it in passing but a fascinating glimpse all the same. * SRS : The old English broadsides of popular songs were a booming business for printers from around 1500 through the 1700s And beyond, SRS. Have you seen the Axon Broadside collection at Chethams in Manchester, UK? Worth a look. Printed in the 19th century, many of the songs have been subsequently collected & recorded from Traditional singers (you can hear 'Out With My Gun in the Morning' (sheet 104) sung by Jimmy Knights on VOTP 18 - & sung by Jim Causley on the Woodbine & Ivy album). Even those that haven't offer a fascinating window into the idiomatic nature of English Folk Song & Ballad making. At 280 ballads maybe it's not quite as extensive as the Bodleian Broadsides, but the scans are of a superior quality! Axon Ballad Collection |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Stilly River Sage Date: 25 Aug 12 - 03:42 AM The old English broadsides of popular songs were a booming business for printers from around 1500 through the 1700s - and they're in the folk tradition now, if they are still sung at all (because while they were liberally borrowed and printed they were rarely attributed to an author, is my understanding). People go back to the Bodlean and many other sources to find the original sheets. I first learned about some of this from a lecture by Lucie Skeaping of the BBC "Early Music Show" back in 2007. Here is the notice I posted at Mudcat about her lecture. That link suggests several good sources. Johnny B. Goode (a poor choice to begin with) doesn't have the filter of time and the folk process of different printers taking the same words and putting them in a different tune, or vice versa, as occurred with those early printed songs. It hasn't gone through different performers passing it on as they remember it, building in changes along the way. There may be different arrangements, yes, but it is essentially still the same song: the copyright laws certainly play a role in how much a modern song can be changed. Let alone the many forms of recording and record keeping of words and music that make gradual change less likely. Intentional change yes, but is that the same as the "folk process" as I've heard Barre Toelken and Michael Cooney describe it? No. You'd be better off starting this discussion with something like Sloop John B or looking at songs by John Jacob Niles that almost sound like folk songs from the start, or songs collected and arranged by Percy Grainger. Then you'd have some real meat to fight over! SRS |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: DMcG Date: 25 Aug 12 - 03:05 AM "It's complicated." Wise words indeed. I think part of the problem is that 'traditional' is really an umbrella terms covering a whole complex of situations. For example, it's worth thinking about back-of-the-bus songs, by which I mean the sort of song that a moderately random group of people on a social outing might start singing to pass the time on a journey, and perhaps the prime example of this is "Yellow Submarine". I think it wouldn't be too misleading that to say that is a traditional song to sing in that scenario, without claiming the song itself is traditional. |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Jim Carroll Date: 25 Aug 12 - 02:52 AM " If you look at the website of The International Society for Traditional Music it says......" Having your cake and eating it Bland? You have made a career of sneering at the findings of the ISTM and at trying to show that they have no right to define folk music; now, it appears, you are citing their present policy as proof that pop songs can be Traditional - "Pop music is Traditional Music". I trust your recent (between yesteday's thread and now) trip down the Road to Damascus was a pleasant one - or is it a case of manipulating the world from your armchair? Definitions are never a matter of waiting for pronouncements from above and then carving them in stone. The 1954 definition worked (to a degree) because it became universaly accepted both by performers and researchers, for long enough for it to take root; it became recognised as a guide to an understanding what made up folk music, and, because nobody has come up with a suitable alternative to day, it remains just that. It not only stood the test of time and acted as a unifying means of communication between interested people and groups across the world but it stood the litmus test of making sense to what many of us found in the field - it worked. The present offerings of the ISTM have undergone no such process, have not been widely and openly discussed and have not stood any particular test of time - they are one opinionion among a group of others. You have persistantly accused other of accepting the '54 definition as a set of rules, which is exactly what you are doing here because this particular "rule book" happens to fit your somewhat bizarre (if sedentary) pronouncements. "I seriously doubt if there is any folk song which was not first a popular composed song" Depends what you mean by "popular" Charlie. My particular 'Road to Damascus' was finding the existance of several hundred songs that never left the Traveller sites or the rural communities in which they were made, yet they served those communities, in some cases for generations, in the mouths of tiny handfuls of people - not part of the national 'traditional' repertoir and not really widely popular enough to be described as 'popularly composed', but certainly traditional. It's complicated Jim Carroll |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Ole Juul Date: 25 Aug 12 - 02:24 AM Stim: . . . the music has been preserved and revived. . . .it has created a question about whether the people who play this revived music are part of "the tradition" or whether "the tradition" ended long ago and they are merely re-creationists. So you've experienced the music. Would you call that folk? I wouldn't, because it isn't (and perhaps never was) popular. I think music has to be popular to be folk. Regardless of the past situation with this music I understand why you can get tired of debating whether that kind of thing was or is traditional. I don't even understand the question. Is Bach traditional? In Denmark, probably a lot more than the local historical music is. Re-creationist? What's that supposed to mean? I can imagine it would refer to music that was lost for a while, such as authentic early music. I wouldn't call that "merely" though. It serves us well, regardless of whether we want to listen to it or not. I suppose another meaning of "re-creationist" could be someone who plays the same thing twice. hehe - Ole (fairly, but not too, old) |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Elmore Date: 25 Aug 12 - 01:00 AM Perhaps a pop song can become a really bad traditional song. |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: GUEST,Stim Date: 24 Aug 12 - 11:31 PM Ole Juul, I was in a band that played a suite of traditional Danish dance tunes. Traditional Danish songs and dances were collected by some of the people that you mentioned above. Other than playing the tunes, I don't know too much about them, but here is a link Danish Traditional Music. I do know that, like here in the US and in the UK, the music has been preserved and revived. For those of us who care to bicker about it, here and in the UK, at least, it has created a question about whether the people who play this revived music are part of "the tradition" or whether "the tradition" ended long ago and they are merely re-creationists. Added to that is a question about whether there are other contemporary "living traditions"( and, if so, what they might be). This question is tirelessly rephrased and debated, mostly in online forums like this one. Perhaps "tirelessly" is not completely accurate, some of us do get tired of it:-) |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Joe Offer Date: 24 Aug 12 - 10:30 PM Oh, I gotta say something about 999's comment about "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" being a "pop" song because it was first used to advertise Coca Cola.... Bad pun. Really, really bad pun. But I like it. -Joe- |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Stewie Date: 24 Aug 12 - 10:29 PM 'I Got Your Ice Cold Nugrape' was a sort of commercial. I reckon it is as much a folk song as any other 'blues' from that period. It fulfils quite a few of Don Firth's criteria set out above. Nu Grape. --Stewie. |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Charley Noble Date: 24 Aug 12 - 10:24 PM I seriously doubt if there is any folk song which was not first a popular composed song. In this modern age it probably takes less time to process a popular song into a folk song. But even in the 19th century a minstrel song would make the rounds of the world in less than a year. Lord knows, "Fiddlers Green" has been collected in ireland as a traditional folk song and no doubt "Mary Ellen Carter Rise Again" is considered a folk song somewhere in Canada. But I still like to think that a real folk song has marinated for some period of time, as it's passed from person to person, dropping a verse here or there, changing a word or line, and generally improving in quality. But not every pop song goes through that process. Some rise to the top and then sink to the bottom, never to rise again. Charley Noble |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Joe Offer Date: 24 Aug 12 - 10:20 PM Woody Guthrie's songs have certainly gone through the folk process. If you look at some of Woody's early versions of This Land Is Your Land, you'll find a lot that you wouldn't sing. I sing the "Communist verses," but I sing a revised version that just seems to work better than the original. And some of the original words of Union Maid are downright sexist, and I'd never sing them. -Joe- |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Ole Juul Date: 24 Aug 12 - 10:16 PM It is adapted by 'the folk'. The modern 'self-written' song is a culmination of a cultural journey. People "write" songs using popular chord progressions (which are changing all the time) and melodic ideas which are popular and people identify with. If that isn't the music of the folk then I can't imagine what is. :) Note too the word "write". This is not generally what is happening in that genre. People compose these songs in a very non-academic way - far away from paper. The very process is a popular tradition. I think it speaks of a time and a culture. Whether a large number of people listen to, or take up, the song is irrelevant to my way of thinking. It is the culture and the process which makes it "folk". |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Ole Juul Date: 24 Aug 12 - 10:02 PM Stim: If the way that you sang the songs in the book, what ever songs they were called, is the way that the music teacher taught, it probably doesn't have much to do with the folk process (but maybe still some) If you sang a slightly different melody than was in the book, or left out or added some verses, or, especially, if you used different names in the song and made jokes out of some of the lines or verses, then the folk process comes into play. Thanks for answering that Stim. The songs in the books were indeed what we called folk music and it was pretty universal. Music teachers would not teach this stuff in those days - this was folk music. It is what was sung in the schools and at parties and get-togethers - often organized for the purpose. Any process here would be a matter of cultural development and not really effecting the music. In one sense, there was actually process. The melodic content and harmonic structure was a direct development of Germanic musical traditions as it had come to fruition in the Baroque. That said, these songs (because of their universality during those generations) were much used as the basis for made-up songs at weddings and similar events. Perhaps this could be better described as popular music even though it is what was called folk. It is also noteworthy that there was almost never any accompaniment - except occasionally piano at public gatherings. Perhaps Denmark doesn't actually have a folk music in the sense that it is being discussed here. Perhaps Denmark (outside of art music) only has historical, and popular. A Wikipedial entry on the Danish cultural canon doesn't even mention "folk" music and only lists that to which I am referring. (see here) I don't mean to derail Larry's query, but it seems to me that there is something here which is specific to English and American culture which would be useful to pinpoint if any discussion of what is, or can become, "folk" is to have any meaning. |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Larry The Radio Guy Date: 24 Aug 12 - 09:10 PM I definitely agree with Don that the modern 'self-written' song not being a folk song....unless it's adapted by 'the folk'. I also think that Don's analogy of 'antiques' is an interesting one. But with 'folk' there are always exceptions....I don't know if there are with antiques. Don't they have to meet all the criteria to be antiques? And I've heard Johnny B. Goode played by many a bar/jam band....and most of the time it's awful. Never know how they'll do it. Re the 100 yr. old criteria: There are a lot of commercial songs that were influenced by traditional sources....the songs aren't particularly old, but the sources or 'fragments' they took it from are. Blandiver's criteria is also interesting. Folk music is "music played by folkies". It could get pretty circular. If a folkie brought his or her computerized equipment that s/he just bought, and started demonstrating it at a 'folk' open stage.....would it be folk music? |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: JohnInKansas Date: 24 Aug 12 - 09:06 PM If somebody remembers the song, especially but not exclusively after they forget who sang it first, it's part of "folk memory" and probably qualifies to be at least "potential folk." If two people remember a song, especially after the original singer isn't around, it is almost a fact that they will sing it differently, hence it will already have been subject to what some call "the folk process" (but the composers just call "song mangling") and certainly has begun the process of "becoming folk." The claim that "it can't be folk because it's pop" doesn't hold up against the fact that more than one of the current "originators" of songs/tunes now considered hard-core folk were, when alive, conductors of or players in their city symphonies and based many of their tunes on plagiarizations of (how revoltin') "classical" composers. (The classical composers retaliated by using "folk tunes" for their themes in some compositions, tit-for-tat.) The valid question is only "is it folk yet? John |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Bee-dubya-ell Date: 24 Aug 12 - 08:53 PM Sure, pop songs can become traditional. So can mom songs. |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: GUEST,Stim Date: 24 Aug 12 - 07:14 PM No, Old Juul, the folk process is a universal thing. It is an ongoing phenomena that shapes the music we sing in much the same way that the waves of the ocean shape the stones and drift wood along the shore. We have to start with something important, though, and that is that the phrase "Folk Songs" on a book cover and the phrase "Folk Songs" as it is used by ethnomusicologists. If the way that you sang the songs in the book, what ever songs they were called, is the way that the music teacher taught, it probably doesn't have much to do with the folk process (but maybe still some) If you sang a slightly different melody than was in the book, or left out or added some verses, or, especially, if you used different names in the song and made jokes out of some of the lines or verses, then the folk process comes into play. |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: GUEST,Blandiver Date: 24 Aug 12 - 07:11 PM Pop music is Traditional Music. If you look at the website of The International Society for Traditional Music it says: Its aims are to further the study, practice, documentation, preservation and dissemination of traditional music —including folk, popular, classical and urban music— and dance of all countries. If you're asking can Pop music become Folk, well that depends on whatever your personal prescriptions of Folk are. If you define Folk Music in terms of context rather than content, then I'd pretty much ALL music has the potential be considered Folk Music if played & discussed by Folkies in a Designated Folk Context (Folk Club, Festival, Mudcat etc.). This is an empirical definition: it states not all music is Folk Music, but all music can be Folk Music if played by Folkies in the name of Folk. So Folk Music = Music Played by Folkies. If a Folkie plays Johnny B. Goode, then, chances are, it'll be Folk Music. Certainly if Jim Eldon played it (which he probably has done at some point) it'll be Folk in the best sense of the word. If a Rock 'n' Roll musician plays it, then it'll be Rock 'n' Roll - a Traditional popular musical idiom. Simples! |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: pdq Date: 24 Aug 12 - 07:02 PM The song "Fox on the Run" was written in the 1960s in England and was made popular (as a Rock song) by a Jewish guy from South Africa. It is widely played by Bluegrass groups who are, for the most part, Folk. |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Henry Krinkle Date: 24 Aug 12 - 07:01 PM They were all pop songs in the beginning. Now they're old, antique pop songs. (:-( 0)= |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Leadfingers Date: 24 Aug 12 - 06:57 PM The Rose Of Allendale has been accepted as a 'Traditional' Folk song despite the fact that it was Victorian Parlour Ballad (Thats a Pop Song for the period) . I see no reason why a number of well crafted modern songs shouldnt go the same way ! |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: GUEST,999 Date: 24 Aug 12 - 06:52 PM Just to add my two cents, suppose a trad song does become a pop hit. Can it then still be considered a folk song? |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: GUEST,999 Date: 24 Aug 12 - 06:42 PM Good eye, Joe. It was a 'pop' song first: Coca Cola. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Ole Juul Date: 24 Aug 12 - 06:36 PM I'm curious about what "the folk process" is. Where I come from we had books of songs called folk songs and they were sung universally by the people. Many of them were written by well know composers specifically for this purpose. Composers such as Weyse, Gruntvig, and Nielsen, wrote these songs, and along with older anonymous songs, are all called traditional. As far as I know the ones from these composers have not undergone any process. I know my great grand parents sung these folk songs, and as a kid in the 50's have sung them with my parents and grandparents. Everyone sings them as written. This is the Danish view. Am I to believe that the "folk process" is peculiar to English? |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Joe Offer Date: 24 Aug 12 - 06:34 PM 999, I was about to say you must be kidding to suggest that "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" could become a folk song, since it started life as a commercial. But hey, maybe commercials have a certain commonality, and they're the modern roots of folk culture. I've been singing the same beer advertising jingles for fifty years or more. If I live long enough, maybe they'll become folk songs. I still have to say there's a huge element of futility in these discussions, since it's mostly a matter of semantics and definitions. There is no divinely-revealed definition of folk song (and some folkies would argue that there is no "divine"), so there are many different definitions. Songs may fit some definitions, but not others. -Joe- |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Don Firth Date: 24 Aug 12 - 06:30 PM Well, the whole thing is a can of worms of course, but in my opinion at least, "Johnny B. Good" is not a folk song. I don't ever hear the song other than on the radio, and even at that, not lately. Nor do I consider some song that someone at an open mike says, "This is a folk song I wrote the other day when I was on the bus." Or any song that some singer-songwriter insists is a folk song, but nobody ever sings it except them. Ever watch that series on PBS, "Antiques Road Show?" I tend to liken folk songs to antiques. A genuine antique has a "provenance." It has a history. It's been around long enough to qualify as a genuine antique .From Wikipedia:It's proven that it's valuable because many people have possessed it and used it, and it may show certain signs of wear (Folk processed? Appearing in a number of slightly, or very, different versions?). Whereas the song written on the bus last week that only the writer sings so far may be a collectible, depending on whether others find it appealing enough to want to sing it themselves. But it is not yet an "antique." Or a folk song. I think that comparison holds up pretty well, no? Don Firth |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: GUEST,999 Date: 24 Aug 12 - 06:27 PM It could happen. It was first a pop song. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Stanron Date: 24 Aug 12 - 05:59 PM 1 yes. Johnny B Good may not be the best example but it has been subject to the folk process. It has changed in different ways in different places. 2. See above. 3. Over to you. I'm sure lots of examples will appear. |
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Subject: Folklore: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Larry The Radio Guy Date: 24 Aug 12 - 05:51 PM The recent hot debate on "folk" music ended with a suggestion that Johnny B. Goode was becoming a 'folksong'.....with someone else saying 'absolutely not...it's rock 'n 'roll. I had started a thread a couple years ago entitled Nominations for 'new' traditional song"---and got some great response. Many of the suggestions, though, were for songs that were always considered in the 'folk' genre....songs by Pete Seeger, Ewan McColl, etc. Many years ago at the first Mariposa Folk Festival I ever went to (early 70's, I think), there was at one stage a panel discussion with John Cohen, Michael Cooney,and Murray McLaughlin called something like "when does it stop being folk". It was fascinating, with Murray having the "it's all folk" philosophy, Michael Cooney on the opposite side of the fence, and John Cohen sort of being in the middle. One thing that haunted me that John Cohen spoke about was how a song like "Six Days on the Road" truly was entering the oral tradition and could probably be considered to be somewhere on the folk-song continuum. I know that this topic, for many of you, has been done to death and some of you are sick of it. But......I still feel if we're going to talk about traditional or folk music, it's important to know where the boundary is. 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? |
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