Can a pop song become traditional?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 03:56 PM

"Traditional" has more than one meaning here. Traditional as it is defined in folk music circles, or traditional in that it is always done because it is part of the popular culture.

Habituation is an aspect - so many songs might simply be forgotten, written or not, so if they are rediscovered in print (author or not) are they now "traditional?" If it has an author and is in print but is so popular and sung with gusto on special occasions, does it become traditional because it fits a specific tradition or occasion? It isn't folk process traditional, but it is culturally traditional. Like Jingle Bells at christmas or Happy Birthday at your party.

SRS

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 04:22 PM

10 years ago, in the wake of one of the ongoing "what is Folk?" discussions, I offered up a method by which songs might be classified as to their stage in the Folk Process...

Steps in the Folk Process

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 05:09 PM

Compare this: Peter Tosh's Johnny B. Goode
with this: Chuck Berry's Johnny B. Goode

I think that you'll have to acknowledge that there is plenty of variation--people learn rock/pop stuff from memorization, variations can result from incomplete recollection, misunderstanding, or deliberate alteration, all of which are part of the folk process.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 05:14 PM

I think some of you are confusing variations on the original song with the folk process. If the source is attributable and the secondary product is always linked back to it, that isn't folk, that's theme and variation.

SRS

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 05:15 PM

"You Are My Sunshine" is a clear example, as are "take Me Out to the Ball Game" and a horde of others.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: The Sandman
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 05:36 PM

"You Are My Sunshine" is a clear example, as are "take Me Out to the Ball Game" and a horde of others
you are entitled to your opinion, and I am entitled to mine, and your examples are not in my opinion traditional songs

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 05:40 PM

"If the source is attributable and the secondary product is always linked back to it, that isn't folk, that's theme and variation." And you know this, because...?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 05:49 PM

That doesn't even make sense, SRS--if the source isn't attributable, then there is no source, and without sources, ethnomusicologists wouldn't have anything to work with.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Bettynh
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 05:49 PM

Arlo Guthrie discussed this awhile ago. And Pete agreed.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: The Sandman
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 06:03 PM

so what,bettynh, just cause PETE agreed, that does not make it a folk song or even a traditional song.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 06:21 PM

Nice link, Betty. I'm with you, Arlo, and Pete. A song that lives on is a Folk Song, whether it's about the Moon in June, a Gold Doubloon, or The Bold Dragoon. Long may it be so!

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 07:03 PM

IMO, Peter Tosh's version of "Johnny B. Goode" is not truly a variation of the original. It's the lyrics to "Johnny B. Goode" sung to a rhythm and melody of Mr. Tosh's devising. There's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't reflect the way variations of songs naturally evolve via the "folk process".

Compare it with Jim & Jesse McReynolds version: CLICK (audio only).

But, overall, I agree with Don Wise's post above, that "Memphis Tennessee" has a lot more going for it when it comes to lending itself to interpretation.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 07:17 PM

Thank you, Betty. Like most everybody, I was moved.

As far as I am concerned, if there is one person who would know, it would be Pete. As for you GSS, the choice is yours-you can either sing along, or not. At the end of the day, that's really all there is to this.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 07:19 PM

I was talking about copyright. It seems that copyright status on a modern composition would stymie the folk process because you will always know the original song. If you do a different version of a song but have to pay a fee to the original writers, does it still count as the folk process?

SRS

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 07:30 PM

IMO it only starts to count when you don't have to pay a fee anymore.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 09:30 PM

This discussion is complicated enough already without bringing up a discussion about copyright and folk/traditional music.;-) Copyright doesn't effect much beyond who gets the money. And somebody always gets the money.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 11:35 PM

Copyright says who has the right to the song, payment or not - and as Morwen notes, if there is a copyright then there is going to be a fee - and the folk process is something I always understood to take place on songs in existence before the legal issue of ownership and copyright comes into it. Isn't that what we're talking about? The organic shift in songs and lyrics from a time when ownership was forgotten and they belong to the folk to sing and change as the interpretations and conditions shift?

SRS

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 02:02 AM

I am not sure where you ot the impression that the folk process did not apply to material that was copyrighted. Copyright simply is the right of authors to profit from their work by licensing it's commercial use. It may offer a limited ability to control changes and variations in a song presented commercially, but in practice, it is difficult to control that. There is no legal way for an author to prevent any sort of non-commercial variation of a song at all.


Here is description of the "Folk Process", from Wikpedia. It is not the final word, it is just an attempt to describe something that has been observed to occur.

"In the study of folklore, the folk process is the way folk material, especially stories, music, and other art, is transformed and re-adapted in the process of its transmission from person to person and from generation to generation.

....it is the act of refinement and creative change by community members within the folk tradition that defines the folk process."

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Larry The Radio Guy
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 03:00 AM

Question for Good Soldier Schweik,

Why isn't You Are My Sunshine, or Take Me Out to the Ballgame traditional?

Is there anything that would have to happen to make them traditional?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 06:23 AM

I say that at this point songs like Johnny B. Goode are folksongs.
{:-(0)=

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: The Sandman
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 07:40 AM

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: JHW - PM
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 03:33 PM

Traditional to me means so long ago that most people or indeed no-one at all knows who wrote it. Even time served songs by McColl or Cyril Tawney, written in the style of a folk song, passing through variation and selection etc. to become what many would reasonably call a Folk Song are not Traditional.
The origin of a song can no longer disappear into the mists of time. Today's media and access to information means that in centuries to come our descendants will still know who wrote Shoals of Herring so it will never be traditional.
Equally so a pop song.
I agree with JHW,
Larry Saidman, Henry Krinkle, that is my answer, that is my opinion you are entitled to yours, if you want to call it folk music or the music of the people that is debatable too but a different matter entirely

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 07:59 AM

I say that at this point songs like Johnny B. Goode are folksongs

Well, Jimmy Wrinkle, they're certainly a non-horse song born of idiomatic tradition and subsequently adopted and processed accordingly; but the fact it exists in even more variations than Barbara Allan isn't enough to make JBG a folk song. And why would one want it to be? For sure, it can be a folk song - but only when sung by folkies: as I might have said earlier or elsewhere even when Jim Eldon performs a pop song it becomes Folk by dint of context & intention alone, but to call it a Folk Song on account of its adoption, process, nascence and adaption is, I think, specious in the extreme.

Call it instead a Traditional Song (a term which is, I would argue, tautologous) of the genus Rock 'n' Roll that has been adopted by Folkies and Classical players (I've heard extremely involved & intricate serial variations for string quartet) is by the by. Composers have used folk songs similarly - doesn't mean Vaughan Williams was writing folk music, but dear God, he was certainly processing it as part his tradition.

All musical Idioms exist in the flux of process. The nascence of a song is testimony to this & its variations thereafter but par for the course, especially in a more improvisatory context, such as the natural oral habitat of The English Folk Song Proper where things emerged differently every time and the collected evidences froze those instances in aspic - silenced as larks tongues!

The Folk Song idiom is hightly prized for its music purity but whether this the consequence of the erosion of the ages or just the mastery of the individual song makers is open (I hope) to debate. Remember, in their working lives these singers would have been masters of a dozen crafts, and just as I hear kids of ten masterfully peeling off everything from heavy metal licks to Irish jigs to Vivaldi sonatas, it ought not surprise us that these songs were made by masters too. Heavens, we even have the names of a few of them - George Bruce Thompson, Tommy Armstrong and James Armstrong to name but three - who composed perfect verse in the Idiom of Traditional Folk Song. They were not alone.

My position here is that Folk Song is a matter of idiom; the Tradition was the genre, rather than the songs per se. It's a case of seeing the wood AND the trees. We access an idiom through its works, and by a familiarity with those works we gain an understanding of that idiom, and however so long dead they still have the power to invigorate us on a level which, I suspect, is as intuitive as it is academic. I know a lot of very passionate folk song scholars - indeed, what would the revival be without them?

The Folk Charm is beguiling, but without an understanding of the natural habitat of Fok Song Proper we're limited to the taxidermy, which is far from flawless as act of pure ethnomusicology - which it wasn't in the first place. It is typified well meaning outsiders like Cecil Sharp made a parlour arrangement of a song he'd filched of his mate's gardener only a few hours earlier. Is that too part of The Folk Process I wonder?

This continues this to this day - all we Folkies are doing is making parlour arrangements of material which is better heard by the original singers, but being so beguiled, we're compelled to do so. Many lose sight of the Old Singers in this tertiary folk process. I keep ranting on about sourcing and listening and revering, but even the most seasoned folkie will look askance if told that his/her song has a better source than Steeleye Span. Tread carefully there, bonny lad, (though I might add that I seldom go on like this in the real world unless faced by a very particular fundamentalism (the dreaded Purist) but they, thankfully, are few & far between these days).

If some gifted young kid got up in a Folk Club and sang the whole of The Revealing Science of God accompanying him/herself on a mandolin (or better still if Jim Eldon did it on his fiddle, we can but dream) then I'd argue that in that manifestation it was, by dint of context alone, a folk song. The original, of course, is not a folk song - the original is merely part of the unbroken 50,000 year Tradition of Popular Music-making.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 08:37 AM

Oops!   Missed Brian's post back there...

Again, I ask who or what is 'Folk' in this context?

I'm using Folk to mean The Revival. I think it's not unreasonable to see it as unbroken continuum from the early years of the 20th century to the present day. Socially, culturally, demographically it occupies the same niche which is no closer to the actually 'folk' whom it regards as its principle source, much less those of a similar social caste today. Folk is thus a construct arising from the condition of social class that operates at several removes from the tradition it postulates, much as Kipling did in The Land. IMHO.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,SteveT
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 09:17 AM

""Traditional" has more than one meaning here. Traditional as it is defined in folk music circles, or traditional in that it is always done because it is part of the popular culture."

Absolutely. If you mean the latter; why not? If you mean the former, you need to define folk (the usual minefield; lets not start again) and also need to define "pop".

My "folk" environment consists of singers who sing purely for the pleasure of it in singarounds in pubs etc and my comments are probably only valid within that context.   I don't spend much time at concerts etc listening to recording artists, professionals or semi-professionals and I don't equate "folk" with stages, electrics, microphones and "performances" so the nature of pop, when I last heard any, would tend to deny it entry to the folk world

"Traditional to me means so long ago that most people or indeed no-one at all knows who wrote it. .. The origin of a song can no longer disappear into the mists of time. Today's media and access to information means that in centuries to come our descendants will still know who wrote Shoals of Herring so it will never be traditional."

This seems to lead to the conclusion that the "folk song process" by which songs become traditional can no longer take place and that there will be no more traditional songs from any source. Whilst I accept the rationale of this viewpoint I'm happy to accept, personally, that songs like Fisherman's Green and Shoals o' Herring are modern songs that are in the process of becoming traditional folk songs because they match several criteria. First, they sound like folk songs to me (I won't go into details)! This is incredibly subjective but, in the end, I think we're all subjective about what constitutes folk so I'm just being honest about it. Second, many of the people that know and sing these songs think they are traditional or at least don't know the author (see the "most people (do not know) who wrote it" above.) [Many of the non-professional, "back room" singers that I know do research the background to their material very thoroughly but many others just sing for the fun of singing without knowing everything about the provenance of the songs they sing] Third, the songs have gone through enough changes to have evolved in the same way that the true traditional songs evolved. The big problem, perhaps, is that the two song examples above were never "pop" songs in the first place and were, in fact, created for and within the current (and "artificial") folk revival movement.   

If there is a true folk process occurring somewhere in the way that it occurred to produce the songs we could all agree are current traditional folk songs, I doubt if that process is occurring in the folk world. (Perhaps it's in the creation of football chants?) It's all a bit like evolution itself, you can only look back afterwards to see that it's happened. You can demonstrate the process in controlled, artificial habitats (farm animals; folk clubs) but the true process is probably going on where you're not looking, will probably produce something you couldn't have predicted, won't recognise and probably wouldn't want to admit as a traditional folk song anyway.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Don Wise
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 09:57 AM

Whether or not present day 'pop' songs pass over into a tradition of some sort or other is a question of time. We are too close to the songs to be able to foresee what may or may not happen in 10,20,50 or more years, irrespective of matters like copyright.
I can well imagine a similar argument taking place in a village pub somewhere, say 150 years ago. One of the younger men has just sung a song from a broadsheet he picked up recently at the market and one of the older men passes comment along the lines of "Na, it won't last, this modern stuff. You mark my words lad, no bugger'll be singing songs like that'n next year!"........And then take a good look at the song collectors lists.
As for the accompaniment/interpretation question, it's all down to your abilities and to how prepared you are to take risks. After all, the audience knows these songs (Chuck Berry or whoever) from radio, concerts and records and so tends to expect you to go along with the 'accepted' version. But if you're prepared to convincingly go out on a limb the results can be fascinating. I know it's not exactly a 'pop' song but with "Hallelujah" for example, singers tend to slavishly follow Leonard Cohen's original interpretation. A while back I heard a version from an Algerian singer which was, apart from the melody, light years away from the usual interpretation- and it was bloody marvellous! Ditto Davenport's a capella "Memphis Tennessee". On the other hand, playing rock'n'roll songs in a proper rock'n'roll manner can be real fun!


I'll go along with Arlo on this.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 10:02 AM

It is one of the more iksome myths of the Folk Movement that in writing Modern Folk Songs people are supplying The Traditional Songs of the Future. Consequently in most clubs you're more likely to hear Artificial Folk Songs than Real Folk Songs, however so artifically interpreted. I have a love of certain Artificial Folk Songs - be they by Bob Pegg, Rudyard Kipling, Peter Bellamy or Ron Baxter - but whilst they might tick all the right Idiomatic Boxes, they are a very different beast to the real thing. In more mawkish MOR circles the songs are even further removed from the core root of the thing (by their very sentimentality), and the Weirdlore Scene is a law unto itself (by its very pagan-centredness). That's the Horses for Courses Definition of Folk.

The Tradition is dead; long live the tradition.

Empirically yours,
Jack Blandiver.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 10:16 AM

All of these words being bandied about 'folk', 'traditional' etc. have different meanings in different contexts and are perhaps best dealt with loosely without rigid definitions. Certain characteristics can certainly be applied but even the 1954 definition has been discredited in academic circles. No-one in ethnomusicology or study of folklore now accepts that knowing an author has any relevance to the subject at all. We know the names of many authors of songs nowadays due to lengthy research. That surely doesn't mean that these artifacts they originated now cease to be part of a particular genre other than the genre of songs without known authors.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: The Sandman
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 12:48 PM

Iam not impressed by your comment Steve, as far as I am concerned trad means of unknown author, plus having been through a process of oral transmission in which words have become changed possibly added to etc, an example being the outlandish knight, it does not mean johnny b goode. I am unimpressed if people on this thread want to be silly and start calling anything, everything, why not start calling baked beans roast beef?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 01:00 PM

"but even the 1954 definition has been discredited in academic circles. No-one in ethnomusicology or study of folklore now accepts that knowing an author has any relevance to the subject at all."
Not following you.
"The International Council also stressed the fact that the term folk music, which includes folk songs, can be "applied to music which has originated with an individual composer and subsequently has been absorbed into the unwritten living tradition of a community"
"Discredited???"
Don't think that knowing the composer of a song has ever been an issue.
It's about a process, not origin.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Don Firth
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 01:44 PM

On the day that "Johnny B. Good" becomes a folk song:   (CLICKY).

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Larry The Radio Guy
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 01:52 PM

Folks, I'm finding this to be a very helpful and relevant discussion. It's relevant to me because one of my challenges, in my involvement with the Princeton Traditional Music Festival, is to try to get some of our local musicians to learn traditional material so they can also be part of the festival.   What comes with this is the need to explain to them what is meant by 'traditional music'.

I realize that, for the purpose of the festival, there is a continuum....and it's not my purpose to be part of a 'traditional police force'.   But I do need to be able to state when it's gone beyond the 'boundary' that the festival needs to have in order to maintain it's integrity.

One old fellow, a harmonica player, says that this official version 'traditional' is bullshit. He says he heard (and played) music in mining and lumber camps as a youth and nobody ever did those songs that the academics define as traditional. No, they did the old pop and country songs.

This, plus some of the comments made here, has made me wonder whether there can be (and is) a such thing as a "living tradition".

And maybe songs like You are My Sunshine could be it.

Even though that song was credited to Jimmy Davis, there is further research that shows that Jimmy Davis actually stole the song from a much older source.

And there have been many different verses I've heard people singing.

Don't get me wrong! I'm not arguing that this song is traditional. I very much respect the knowledge that many of you are communicating in this thread.

I'm just a 'folkie' who's trying to figure it out, and to communicate it to people who don't have this understanding so they can be sensitive to maintaining the integrity of a 'traditional music' event.

Thanks for all your input.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: The Sandman
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 02:43 PM

oh for gods sake, just go away and play music, play what you like, but if you cant recognise a traditional song, take up knitting.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Bettynh
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 03:02 PM

I'm fairly new to this academic-type discussion, really. I come from a background, like your harmonica player, Larry, where isolated singers gathered and sang much of the day and never knew or cared where the songs came from - Girl Scout camps of the 50s and early 60s. I can't speak about what happens there now. The songs were sung for the singing. After reading here a few years, I guess some of them were hundreds of years old (Rise Up Oh Flame, Rolling Home), some were obviously composed about particular events (Girl Scout belting out a version of The Ship Titanic) and some were never heard anywhere else and may have been written by someone on staff at that particular time and place. I've seen songbooks, so there were collectors (and disseminators) around at that time. Is anyone collecting now? I'd love to hear what camp kids are singing now.

I'f you're really interested in what makes "Traditional Music," why not set up a booth like the StoryCorps project asking for people to share songs they haven't heard elsewhere? At the least, it'd give the academics some new material to argue over.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Larry The Radio Guy
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 03:21 PM

To Good Soldier Schweik: Yes, I can recognize a traditional song.

What I can't recognize is when it starts deviating from 'traditional'. Most classifications are on a continuum, you know....very little in life is purely black and white.

I'm pleased that up to this point this discussion has been very civil. I think your comment was a deviation from that continuum of civility. (Maybe this one's a slight deviation too. If so, my apologies.

Thank you for your feedback, Bettynh. You are able to recognize the complexity of the topic. I'm wondering not just what kids sing in camps, but what they sing in mining and logging camps today. Do people still write songs about their bosses and fellow workers? (Or make revisions to pop and folk songs to describe what's going on in their lives?   Or do they sing at all.....maybe they just spend all their time on their laptops.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 05:33 PM

Just so you know Larry, when Blandiver said this:

"even when Jim Eldon performs a pop song it becomes Folk by dint of context & intention alone, but to call it a Folk Song on account of its adoption, process, nascence and adaption is, I think, specious in the extreme."

It became really clear that he isn't a folklorist/ethnomusicologist, and doesn't really understand what they do, or what they've been doing for the last hundred odd years.
He may well have other strengths, and I am sure he's a lot of fun at parties.

Jim Carroll, on the other hand, knows what he's talking about. He's done some wonderful and important work, and has a great understanding of the subject. One of the few redeeming features of discussions like this is that Jim often shares his knowledge..

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 05:54 PM

Disregarding Dick's irrelevances and tantrums.

Jim,
I've been led to believe that the 54 definition/guidelines did include the unknown author clause but was later dropped. I would like clarification on this. There are '54' experts on here I'm sure who can put us right.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Larry The Radio Guy
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 05:59 PM

Actually I find Blandiver's posts quite fascinating....and it's really only his take on what is 'folk'.

I've looked through Jim Carroll's posts and I'm still trying to understand that 'process' fully......and can it still exist today?

If not, that it really is an academic pursuit of interest only to a learned few. Which is fine.....but the interest will eventually die.

So looking at something like "You are My Sunshine".   Aside from it's origin (which is debateable and probably not fully known....despite Jimmy Davis' claim to have written it)..........is their a 'process' it would need to go through in order to be considered traditional?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 06:21 PM

Larry,
IMO the oral tradition still exists today, but because of a number of reasons (not least modern technology) that tradition is not the same as before the era of sound recording. However the oral tradition of the last 500 years will not be the same as that of the pre-print era.

FWIW I consider it as part of oral tradition but it is also part of other genres such as 'community songs'. It is certainly part of my own personal oral tradition. If I'm playing in a pub bar-room to the general public, it's one I will sing and accompany, as I know all the real folk will be able to join in.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 09:08 PM

The "folk process" is simply a term that refers to the way that a community uses its available resources to adapt something(in our case, music, but it doesn't have to be) to its own purposes and tastes.

Broadsides, sheet music, and recordings show us how a piece starts out, but folklorists and ethnomusicologists are concerned with the way that communities change it to suit their needs.

The study of the "folk process" is very much akin to the study of language changes, and it is worth noting that the departments of linguistics and folklore are very closely associated as schools such as the University of Pennsylvania.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: The Sandman
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 02:10 AM

LARRY,I apologise if you find my post uncivil.
As a singer the reason I choose to sing a song is whether it appeals to me.
I do not think you should be encouraging a young singer to be singing you are my sunshine, because I do not think it is a good song, it may be popular, but I do not rate it.
There are amongst the traditional repertoire some excellent songs and some inferior ones the vast majority of singers select those songs that appeal to them and discard those that they do not like.
Jim Carroll stated that in his experience traditional singers differentiated between certain genres of songs in their repertoire, although I am not a traditional singer, but someone who has been singing traditional songs[ not exclusively], for a long time,I feel I recognise one [generally speaking] when I hear it.
I find these threads a waste of time, extremely frustrating furthermore they generally seem to go around in circles, reaching no conclusion,Ifeel it a better use of time to play music, therefore I will leave this discussion and let you carry on the endless roundabout

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 03:28 AM

"Broadsides, sheet music, and recordings show us how a piece starts out" There is absolutely no evidence whatever that this is the case - if you have discovered a sure way to prove how folksongs began - who knows, there might be a Nobel on offer somewhere. What little work we managed to do on 'ballad' sellers in Ireland indicates that they went for their material to the tradition or to popular songs of the time; when asked if they composed the songs they sold the reply was "why bother, there was plenty to choose from all round us?" The seller we spent a great deal of time with described how he (a non-literate Traveller) went to the printer and recited his father's songs (The Blind Beggar, Early in the Month of Spring, Gradh Geal Mo Chroi The Herring….) over the counter and had him run off as many songs sheets as were required. With respect to Steve Gardham, in my opinion all that has anybody has managed to do is to research songs back to the first time they appeared in print. There is no way of proving one way or the other whether any given song existed before it went into print or was just lifted from the tradition - which appears to be the argument put forward by broadside experts like Leslie Shepherd, and even as far back as Charles Hindley. Izaac Walton, in his 'Compleat Angler' referred to the broadsides he saw on the tavern walls as 'Country Songs'. The whole process of singers learning from print is a complex one - in our experience, the indications are that songs learned from a printed source were often treated as sacrosanct and remained unchanged, just for starters. Unsubstantiated definitive statements are little more than blind alleys that are quite likely to be replaced by other unsubstantiated blind alleys in the future. "I've looked through Jim Carroll's posts and I'm still trying to understand that 'process' fully" Me too - it's what we're all trying to arrive at. We can only pick our way through every scrap of what little we know of the song tradition, neglecting or 'explaining away' nothing (a tendency here and elsewhere). I'm no great fan of '54' as it stands at present, but I do think we need some sort of a definition that will allow us to communicate with kindred souls rather than squabbling uselessly and making threads like this an "Oh no - not another sodding "What is folksong" thread" Steve; I've never had a problem with the 'known author' inclusion idea, and I don't think anybody has made much of an issue of it for a long time, if they ever did. The Irish, particularly Irish language song tradition has such pieces in spades. If, as you say, "you would like clarification..... was dropped later" you have no grounds for saying "but even the 1954 definition has been discredited in academic circles" - exactly the type of definitive statement that creates more heat than light - I expect a hundred lines by the end of the day, "I must not...."! Nor do I believe that age has too much to do with whether a song is 'folk' or 'traditional'. We recorded many songs, particularly from Travellers, which must have been recently made, certainly well within the lifetimes of the singers (though I have to say that a common factor running through most of them was that their makers were almost exclusively 'anon') As I've said, it has more to do with the progress of a song rather than where it came from Is Johnny B Goode a folksong? Don't see any argument here that shows it to be anything but an oft performed pop song - once again a confusing of 'tradition' and 'repetition'. Try telling the Chuck Berry holdings that it's in the public domain and see how far that gets you. Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 03:31 AM

Sorry about the 'paragraphination' in that.
Bloody computers; were's me quill pen??
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: banksie
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 03:53 AM

Whatever one's taste in music surely the ultimate, base level test is whether people sing along. Go into a typical pub (not one where the folk club is being held at that time) get your guitar out and start singing something like Bye Bye Love by the Everly Brothers, and people will join in - at least on the chorus (and get the words wrong so they make bits up to fit {the folk process?}). Sing the Outlandish Knight, and most people will consider it a very good time to go to the bar or start talking.

I have tried this experiment in a band I was in for a while. They wanted to add a few more `real' folk songs, so I volunteered to sing The Blackbird and She Moved Through The Fair (a good example of a song widely accepted as trad but where the writer is known - Padraic Collum - and it is said to be a concatenation of some older trad songs and poems). The audiences would love the Everly Brothers stuff, and the Black Velvet Band (again a `trad Irish' song that actually isn't, I believe and something of a hit record for The Dubliners back in the day). Now, this could be something to do with my singing, but when it was time for one of the folk ballads, the bar was packed.

So I'd say of course a few modern pop songs will become `folk', they are already. Beatles songs already are. I'm the first to acknowledge that I prefer `traditional folk songs' but surprisingly few folk sing them, or know them. And I would have thought that had to be at least part of any test of `folk music'.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Larry The Radio Guy
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 04:17 AM

Thanks Jim. I enjoyed reading that post, despite the 'paragraphination'. (What causes that, anyway?).

Just to reinforce what it is all you knowledgeable people are referring to when you make reference to 1954.

"In 1954 the International Folk Music Council defined folk music as "the product of a musical tradition that has been evolved through the process of oral transmission. The factors that shape the tradition are: (1) continuity which links the present with the past; (2) variation which springs from the creative impulse of the individual or the group; and (3) selection by the community which determines the form or forms in which the music survives."

Regarding point 3: It does seem that there is some contention between the academic community and the people banksie describes who frequent the 'typical pub'.

And somebody pointed out the difference between 'tradition' in terms of how a group of people have always done things vs. tradition relating to folk or traditional music.

Yet it's still the same word....so there must be a connection.

Back to the old harmonica player who talked about how people in the logging and mining camps would sing old pop and country songs.

And the question about what children sing today in summer camps.

Do truckers sing "Six Days On the Road" at trucker's conventions? (That was the song that John Cohen once thought was a pop song that was entering the oral tradition).

And.....most importantly....do any of these questions matter when we talk about traditional music?   

I actually kind of like the 1954 definition....it does give a certain grounding.

But oral transmission is different now than it was then. A lot of songs are spread today through facebook.....and it's a much purer transmission than those controlled by record companies or radio stations.   But.....are there variations due to creative impulses of the individual or group?

It does go back to the question as to whether there is (or can be) a living tradition.   And whether it's possible for 'pop' songs to enter that living tradition.

(By the way, I tend to agree that "Johnny B. Goode" wouldn't quality, as it is too much associated with one singer/writer). Also, there's no quality in the song that seems to clearly link the present with the past.

That, to me, seems to be a crucial criteria....that linking.   I'd like to hear more about that. What exactly does it mean?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 05:11 AM

"(What causes that, anyway?)."
Happens when I preview a posting before I send it.
More late - visit to Galway Clinic in the offing - anybody ever hear of sleep-aepnia? I hadn't until I.... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 05:28 AM

It became really clear that he isn't a folklorist/ethnomusicologist,

In which case, GUEST, you missed the point entirely. At no point have I claimed to be either of those things, though as a Folk Musician (which is to say one who sings & plays as part of the wider Revival) I do have more than a passing interest in the subjects.

But, for the sake of clarification...

When I say that a Jim Eldon performance of a pop song is Folk I'm talking about the wider remits of the Revival Scene in the UK today which is not very concerned with The Tradition per se, but a particular way of dealing with al manner of Popular Idioms in terms of its Spirit. It's akin to Jane Turriff singing a Jimmie Rodgers song - it touches a broader cultural ambience of what most of the population experience by way of a Common Vernacular Musical Usage beyond the specialist enthusiasms of a small number of habitues in a small corner of The Revival. Traditional Singers were part of that wider culture too; Folk Singers likewise, but when Norma Waterson or June Tabor do covers of non-folk / popular material, it is still perceived as being Folk by the general population, and by most folkies too.

To call Pop Songs 'Folk Songs' on account of the usual factors under discussion here (1954 etc.) is to miss the point of how Pop Songs are pretty complication creatures anyway, generated by communities and adopted and adapted thereafter according to a Master Idiom stretching back centuries and yet in a constant state of flux & renewal as new talent emerges to learn their chops, pay their dues & take it to the next stage as it suits them to do so. To call that process a 'Folk Process' or Pop Music a 'Folk Music' is to miss the point that all music is Traditional in that very sense. The very term 'Traditional Music', as I might have said earlier, is tautologous - Music by its very nature is Traditional, all music, but that sure as hell doesn't make it Folk. Folk didn't exist before the term was invented in the mid 19th century anyway; hell, even Prof Child thought of his Ballads as Pop Songs.

*

Jim Carroll, on the other hand, knows what he's talking about. He's done some wonderful and important work, and has a great understanding of the subject. One of the few redeeming features of discussions like this is that Jim often shares his knowledge..

I doubt I'd bother if this wasn't the case.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 05:47 AM

"Pop Songs are pretty complication creatures anyway"
No they're not; they are commodities that are more or less totally controlled by a music establisment that will use them as they see fit and cast them aside when they have no more use of them, to replce them with use them as they... so ad infinitum
That us ousiders like us mght (or not) listen to them and even perform them publicly when IMRO isn't listening has nothing to do with the fact that they are not ours and never will be tthanks to the attached (c)
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: theleveller
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 06:55 AM

I must admit, I'm beginning to wonder if there ever was such a thing as folk song and that it is, indeed, an artificial construct backed up by a spurious and arbitrary definition - bit like religion, really: god exists because the bible says so - and the bible is the word of god. In other words, a self-perpetuating concept.

Seems more likely that there have always been popular songs which are relevant to a particular time and context and which change style to reflect the ever-developing culture and mores of the time. The popular songs of any one time can give us a fascinating insight into the thinking of the 'common' people of that time, as in demonstrated in Christopher Hill's 'Liberty Against the Law' and, of course, deserve to be preserved. At one time this meant by oral transmission but nowadays we have much more sophisticated means. Plus ca change as they say across the water.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 07:07 AM

Nice one, TL. 100??

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 07:16 AM

'Popular' is one of those weasel-words. before Thoms' 1840s coinage, it was the word generally used where we would say 'folk': 'Popular Antiquities' was the name gave his C18 collection of what we would call 'folk customs'. And even after ~~ what is the title, just remind me, of Child's collection: 'The English and Scottish [what?] Ballads'? And it seems to me that some posters are confusing the issue by using the word indiscriminately, and sometimes simultaneously, in both/all of these senses at once.

Until terms are properly defined, and some precise distinctions made, this thread is going to go on infinitely chasing its own tail, it seems to me.

~M~