Can a pop song become traditional?

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 - 11:46 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: 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: Jim Carroll
Date: 28 Aug 12 - 12:39 PM

Whatever
Jim Carrolol

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 - 02:38 PM

Set in ezzzzzzzz
Jim Carroll

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 - 04:06 PM

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

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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,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: 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,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,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,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,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: 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: 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: 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: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 02:57 PM

and maybe I'm being 'wishy washy' but I see the truth in both.

Me too. Is life ever so simple as to be clear cut?

they knew the difference between Johnny B Goode and The Bucks of Oranmore

And the two can coexist quite happily in the same musical universe. Most Irish Bands of my acquaintance wouldn't get the gigs if they couldn't cover The Dubliners, Irish Women, Riverdance, Dervish as well as The Commitments.

*

Yet you feel free to insult anybody you choose whenever it takes your fancy.

I never insult anyone, Jim. I question certain assumptions, but I never get personal.

*

I still await the evidence that recent songs are getting passed on down the generations

Things get passed on, only differently; and maybe the time scale is a little different too. The Idioms certainly get passed on - the means by which new music is created; we inherit that the same as language. I've still got my mother's old Beatles 45's, including her cherished copy of All You Need Is Love which I flipped over & flipped out to as a kid in '67 when I heard Lennon's modal clavioline on Baby You're a Rich Man. That's Pop heritage! It provided the link between the Smallpipes and the Prog that followed; especially when I hear the Third Ear Band a few years later. Pow! I'm still reeling, man. Seriously. That got me into Medieval Music via The Macbeth soundtrack & I still dream of a universe where Magma and Gong used to tour together - or where Mark E. Smith used to travel on the same bus as Ian Curtis, or Sun Ra and Rahsaan Roland Kirk would meet on the subway in the early hours after the gigging was done, or the thoughts of what Willie Scott, Jimmy McBeath and Davie Stewart had to say to each other in those high and far off times...

We live in a wonderful wonderful wonderful wonderful traditional popular musical universe. Forgive the worst pun you'll ever hear but it's Johnny B. Goode to be here. As Zappa said - Music is the Best.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 03:29 PM

"grim nationalistic MOR pastiche"

I found myself at a concertina workshop with this wonderful musician last year. Kindly explain how her music fits into the ludicrous characterisation above.

Mary McNamara

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 04:25 PM

I was thinking more of Riverdance actually - but the thing I love about pre-Revival Irish musicians & singers (same for America & UK) is the numinouness that, to my ears at least (this is a matter of personal taste after all), is conspicuously absent thereafter.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 06:46 PM

Is it 'numinousness', 'numinescence' or 'numinosity'?
It's like 'luminous'.
You say 'numinosity'?
I do.
And when a things is numinous, it exudes an air of mystery, of sanctity, of energy.
It appears 'charged'.

(Peter Blegvad)

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 07:02 PM

numinosity....almost rhymes with verbosity.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 08:09 PM

I still await the evidence that recent songs are getting passed on down the generations

What evidence do you need?

I've said above, a couple of times, that I regularly hear people in their 20s singing and playing songs that are 40-60 years old, or joining in with them word-perfect when they hear them played.

The songs include "modern folk" songs...I've posted before about the young mandolin player who "only plays traditional Irish songs" launching into "Fiddler's Green" and reacting with horror when told that not only was it written in Grimsby, but that the composer was still alive and performing.

As for pop and rock songs, as I said above, "Hotel California" is definitely a generation-crossing "anthem"...if young people from Axminster to Sakhalin and various points between are able to identify it from the first bar and join in word-perfect, including the 3 percussive table-slaps immediately before the vocals start, then in my book it's "there". In the last few months I've heard it done by, and joined in by, people at least a generation removed from its composition in: Axminster; Yeovil; Bethesda; Tunbridge Wells; Den Helder; Stavanger; St Petersburg and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. I would probably have heard it in Turkmenbashi and Ashgabat if I'd been there long enough to come across any singing!

Other pop/rock songs I hear sung by people in their 20s and younger all the time, and in widely separated locations, include:

- Space Oddity
- Wish You Were Here
- Blowin' In The Wind
- Streets of London
- Teach Your Children
- Bad Moon Rising
- Catch The Wind
- Big Yellow Taxi
- The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
- Ruby Tuesday

to name just 10 of many.

And strangely, there seems to have been a recent uptake of "Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die Rag" which is *really* out of its time and place, but which I've heard done recently by under-30s in both Axminster and Tunbridge Wells, and joined in with enthusiastically by others.

I suspect that one's just a flash in the pan, but I'd be willing to bet that at least half the other 10 I listed above continue to make their way down the generations.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: The Sandman
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 10:29 PM

I am flabbergasted, as Shakespeare might have said "much ado about nothing

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 10:39 PM

I have been a folksong leader and performer for about 55 years and, although I am partial to traditional songs, and I champion then in my reviews, I believe that a "folk song" is a song that people sing, rather than just listen to. Of course, tradition takes time. Is there anything sillier than an event that is advertised as The First Annual whatever?
But, even though Dr. Kenneth Goldstien was a friend, and my daughter's godfather, his assertion that a folksong's author must be anon and altered by, what he called "folk process", was, and is nosensical. Even he would have admitted that Silent Night, Happy Birthday and the Star Spangled Banner are traditional and ritual folksongs. The same can be said for Guthrey's "This Land is Your Land", Leadbelly's "Goodnight Irene" and Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" A folksong outlives its creator and its popularity. I suspect that "Puff, The Magic Dragon" will achieve folk status. Children's songs and Christmas carols tend to have a longer shelf life.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 04:27 AM

Agree with Rob, the kinds of songs he lists have definitely become generation transiting acoustic anthems - just take a look at YouTube and you'll see examples of hundreds of young musicians playing such songs. The key difference today being that such songs have become a part of contemporary DIY music making traditions via the means of recorded sound, the internet and also importantly via 'Greatest Rock Songs for Guitar' chord books, rather than the exclusively oral tradition of yore - though that plays it's part also.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: theleveller
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 04:30 AM

"'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."

Very true - whenever it happens I always think that Wordsworth sums it up.

                               "And I have felt
      A presence that disturbs me with the joy
      Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
      Of something far more deeply interfused,
      Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns"

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Will Fly
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 04:30 AM

Rob - some very interesting comments from your own experience on how, in our modern times, popular songs - and even fragments of these songs - are remembered cross-culturally. Perhaps we're seeing the beginning of a different kind of "folk process" (I hate the phrase but can't think of a better) in which, from out of the multitude of popular songs composed and created in our time, certain ones get sifted out and come to prominence while the rest of them settle down to relative obscurity. I'm generalising, of course, but I'm sure you'll get my drift. The main difference between our time and that of the collectors at the turn of the 20th century is that recording and archiving techniques allow the provenance of all of this modern material to be known and documented. In this world, both the "classics" and the "dross" survive on an equal footing and can be brought out for inspection as and when required.

What would we have heard two or three or four hundred years ago? What has not survived? Perhaps, like today, a mixture of great songs and comparatively poor material. I've been listening avidly to music for the greater part of my 68 years, and been actively performing a wide range of music for over 45 of them. I often reflect that, when I first started listening to music hall songs, for example, this material was around 50-60 years old then. Now it's over 100 years old. Similarly, the 20s and 30s jazz I'm so fond of was in its 40s when I started playing it - but is now fast becoming a venerable centenarian. In both genres time has, like water running through a rock formation, eroded the soft stuff and left the peaks standing. It's a process analogous to that of traditional music, with the exception that, unlike traditional music, we have all the relevant birth information. What will be remembered and heard and played of our modern music in 100 time...?

As far as traditional music is concerned, I'm firmly of the belief that the songs we hear today started off as personal compositions by an individual. Some names survive, others don't. And I'm sorry to say that - not really being immersed in the folk song tradition, it matters not a jot to me whether Variant A is related to Variant B by way of a housewife in Banff. What does matter to me is how good the song/tune is to my ears.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,d
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 06:03 AM

Will - and by extension Rob - you two sum up the situation pretty well. One could also include our parents, aunts, uncles here - what, if anything, did they sing to us when we were kids? 'Folksongs'??? Or songs from rambling/climbing club outings, popular films of the time etc.? Some of these songs may have stuck in our memories, some we may even sing irrespective of whether we know who composed them or not, or some we've even possibly used as vehicles for completely new songs. Only time will tell whether anything like 'folkmusic' will be played and sung in 2112, and the same goes for songs crossing over from one genre to another. (It's 'folk' Jim, but not as we know it!) Since none of those pontificating here in this thread are going to be around in 2112, surely the question is really only one of academic interest.

"Fixin' to Die Rag" may be superficially about Viet-Nam, but surely it's the general sentiment of the song - war and the behaviour of politicians and military - that matters?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: johncharles
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 06:05 AM

Will, you could be that man on the clapham omnibus. I may have to have a rest now, philosophy is so tiring.
john.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 06:22 AM

surely we could have answered this thread's question with just two words (rather than 190something posts):

"Yellow Submarine"

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 07:19 AM

"I still await the evidence that recent songs are getting passed on down the generations..."

"What evidence do you need?"

As several people have now pointed out, in order to discuss the original question we have to decide what 'traditional' actually means. Clearly it meant one thing then and another now. I've tried to remember to qualify at least some of my comments with the phrase "in the old sense". However, as far as the dictionary goes the main meaning is given as:

"The passing down of elements of a culture from generation to generation, especially by oral communication."

A secondary meaning, "A time-honored practice or set of such practices." is relevant here, too. (I don't think anyone here has yet claimed Slade's 'Merry Christmas' as traditional, but it's certainly part of what is now the traditional Christmas soundtrack, like it or not)

When I talk about "getting passed down" I'm talking about songs being passed from parents to children, and then on to the next generation and the one after that. Sheila Kay Adams' family singing tradition, for instance. What Rob is describing (and I'm genuinely fascinated by it) is a process by which songs are accessible to the generation below the one that first enjoyed them, but as the result of a more complex series of processes that no doubt involves peer-to-peer transmission but also Youtube, Spotify, CDs, LPs, etc. There's always a fixed reference point to return to. Of course that also means that those songs will be available for ever, for anyone who wishes to access them.

When I said "it's too early to tell", I was imagining a list that might have been drawn up in 1960, of songs that would stand the test of time. What would it have included? 'Oh, What a Beautiful Morning'? 'Getting to Know You'? 'Singing in the Rain'? 'Ol' Man River'? As it happens I remember my Mum singing the first two of those around the house, and could manage at least a verse and chorus of the first. But I don't sing them around the house (nor much else, for that matter, unless I'm practising) and I guess Rob's young musicians in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk don't sing them either. Of course they'll always be there for people who like to watch classic old musicals, but I suspeect they'll fall out of more general circulation in another generation.

Now I'd concede that those songs from the shows represent a style of music that the next generation largely rejected, whereas the generation below mine hasn't (entirely) rejected the guitar-based popular music idiom that arose in the 1960s. Also, there's been a democratisation of music-making since working-class youths of the 60s achieved fame by playing electric guitars, then punks and rappers showed that music-making was accessible to anyone, instruments and technology became more accessible, and venues like my local music pub started running open-mikes. There's plenty of opportunity to get involved in music today. Nonetheless, those twenty-year-olds who are playing 'Hotel California' (do the three table-slaps make it the new 'Wild Rover', I wonder?) are still part of a select community that chooses to entertain itself by sharing music, a bubble no less than the folkie bubble CS identified.

fRoots magazine reckons from surveys that 53% of its readers play an instrument, two thirds of those in public - but that's fRoots, which champions essentially home-made music. What percentage would you find amongst the readers of Auto Trader, Country Life, The Spectator, Cosmopolitan or Nuts? There is a subculture of music-makers, but I suggest (while respecting various bits of testimony above) it's still a minority. In the heyday of what (with all the usual disclaimers) I'll call the folk tradition, the majority of people sang, albeit without necessarily having a large repertoire. According to Roud, "people sang in all kinds of places and contexts, and there was probably no situation in which people did not sing at one time or another". He goes on to list instances both private and public: the home, the pub, the workplace, etc. According to an account of turn-of-the-century Nova Scotia:

"In the town where I lived until I was twelve years old, almost everyone sang these old songs and ballads. Neighbors were few and far between, books and magazines were scarce and we had to make the best of what we had... If a stranger came to house or to one of our neighborhood gatherings, it was considered a breach of good manners not to ask him to sing."

We simply don't have that kind of culture now, however much wonderful music is made in our present culture. Celebrate the difference, but recognize it. And recognize too that, in the great scheme of things, it doesn't actually matter very much, other than as an interesting discussion topic.

"I was thinking more of Riverdance actually"

Then why not say so? Instant consensus, and no subsequent ill-humour!

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Mr Happy
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 08:28 AM

Yes

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Iains
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 05:11 PM

I have read all this thread with fascination. There seem to be several streams of thought(at least)There is a highly academic line of reasoning that suggests everything has too be highly dissected and conform to a rigerous test as to origin/antiquity-even to the extent of having no attributable author. Another argues that a song must have evolved. The definition of folk has no universally accepted criteria.
Also the world has moved on. Data can move around the world in an instant- the days of an itinerant minstrel ceased many years passed.
In many ways the purists need to update their act to the modern world, they seem to require that a song evolves and travels over a period of time. The internet provides a new paradigm.
Is Raglan Road a folk song or in the folk idiom or is this purely an argument based around semantics? Does the same apply to O'carolyn's Farewell to Music, or Carrickfergus?
In sessions I attended in Lincolnshire for some years the music played
would encompass anything in the folk 'idiom' I am sure we all collectively regarded it as folk, irregardless of wether it was written by John Connolly, Ralph Mctell or A N Other back in the 1600's
If Joe average regards Fairytale of New York as a traditional folk song then surely it is? By it's chart sales it is also a pop song.
Is music of a certain genre to be enjoyed by listening to it-playing it-or dissecting it? The latter song is a traditional christmas favourite. So to answer the original thread I would say YES.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 05:45 PM

Will Fly has described the process clearly enough:
"time has, like water running through a rock formation, eroded the soft stuff and left the peaks standing. " and, by means of this analogy, suggested that rather than being a phenomenon peculiar to music, or to a particular culture or society, or even to humanity, it is at root, a universal principle.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 06:33 PM

"Goodnight Irene". "So Long, It's Been to Know Ya". "You Are My Sunshine".
All have entered into the folk process. They have been adopted by people who have no idea that they were written in the last century and that their composers are known. When people sing them they sing them as songs they learned from somebody else; a parent, a sibling, a friend, from a recording. They may remember the lyrics or the tune " "incorrectly" or add their own variations.
Frankie Armstrong told me she met a couple of German girls travelling in Wales who were singing Ewan MacColl's "Moving On Song". Unlikely they learned it from the original Radio Ballad. It had become part of their personal tradition.
Many of Ewan's songs have entered the tradition. "Shoals of Herring" is popular in Ireland and there are people there who will swear they learned it from their grandfather.
It doesn't matter the provenance of a song. If people adopt it as their own it becomes "folk".
Big Bill Broonzy once said, "If folks sing it it's folk music."

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 06:59 PM

Will: In both genres time has, like water running through a rock formation, eroded the soft stuff and left the peaks standing.

As someone involved in geophysics that image strikes a very appropriate chord!

It's been fascinating out here to see what songs are known and sung. It's also fascinating to see that the more "commercial" side of things (what's playing in clubs and such) is largely Rap, Trance and Dub-Step music that sounds about 3-4 years "out of date" compared to the UK. The local "commercial" music seems to be mainly Rap or Metal, and the lyrics often switch into English, sometimes inappropriately. I was walking through a mall with quite loud piped music the other day and the Russian lyrics suddenly switched to : "I want to lick your balls until you come", repeated 3 times until they switched back to Russian. I was an obvious foreigner as I stopped dead and did a distinct "double take"!

Brian: What Rob is describing (and I'm genuinely fascinated by it) is a process by which songs are accessible to the generation below the one that first enjoyed them, but as the result of a more complex series of processes that no doubt involves peer-to-peer transmission but also Youtube, Spotify, CDs, LPs, etc. There's always a fixed reference point to return to. Of course that also means that those songs will be available for ever, for anyone who wishes to access them.

Yes, you've hit the nail on the head there in terms of transmission processes. And, as someone else pointed out, there are also loads of "Best Rock Guitar Tunes" books and similar. I know that some of the songs in my "inter-generational list" feature in several of these books.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 31 Aug 12 - 01:21 AM

Much impressed by Brian's last post. Reminded by it of something from my pre-WW2 childhood, about 1937 when I would have been 5. We had the painters in for a few days; and one of them while at work incessantly sang The Skye Boat Song, which I thought beautiful. Have always wondered why, and whether such a thing would happen today. (Just an anecdote, but felt faintly relevant.)

~M~