Can a pop song become traditional?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,guest
Date: 16 Nov 15 - 04:02 AM

I'm sorry guest I'm missing your point or you're missing mine.If you paid £30 or £40 pound to see a football match would you be just as happy if 13 or 15 lads came out with an oval ball ?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Nov 15 - 03:53 AM

"So I have to accept that the term has changed."
Then you have to define what it has changed into so we can continue to discuss it.
I have hundreds of books labelled "folk" or "tradition" going back to the beginning of the twentieth century and beyond, dealing with a specific and identifiable type of song (and related cultures and activities).
I have dedicated half a century listening to singing, studying and researching that specific type of music - thirty years of that time was spent finding old singers, recording their songs and interviewing them on how those songs fitted into their lives.
That time has only confirmed in my mind the idea I first started out with - that there is a unique body of song and music, that it held a unique place in the lives of people and communities and that they claimed it as "ours" (Irish, Traveller, Norfolk... wherever) something they can never claim about music that was manufactured and copyrighted by a business to be sold.
It's not the repetition or the alteration or the like or dislike that makes it traditional - it's role within the communities it served and almost certainly where it originated.
If the terms used to identify that music no longer serves because they have been replaced by other types of music, then you have to say why that is - you have to re-define the term.
Bert Lloyd summed it up perfectly way back in 1967 when he wrote "If Little Boxes and The Red Flag are folk songs, then we need a new term to describe The Outlandish Knight, Searching for Lambs and The Coalowner and the Pitman's Wife".
I suggest that the length of time the terms have been in use, the amount of research that has gon into the subject and the century or so of published material making use of the terms 'folk' and 'traditional', it is far, far too late to rename our music now - the term is too well defined for that.
It's not as if these changes you claim to have taken place have happened because the public have taken them up and re-applied them They are not terms in general use in any shape or form when applied to music - we have failed miserably to involve the broad mass of people in our music.
These changes are being demanded by a tiny number of self-interested people who lack either energy or imagination to think of a name or definition of unrelated music that catches their fancy - and even they are not agreed on what that new definition is.
The term(s) are now a a convenient cultural catchall to suit people who don't necessarily like folk or traditional music but find the term handy for their own particular ambitions and interests.
That is not how language evolves - it is not evolution but self-serving manipulation.
One of the features of traditional/folk music is that it has bee ruled to be in the public domain - try tellin the copyright holders of Eleanor Rigby that it belongs to us all and wait for the waterfall of legal writs to come showering through your letterbox.
What do you suggest - that folk song be taken out of the public domain and be subject to copyright, as are Beatles songs?
I'd have thought that folk music proper has enough problems to cope with if it is to survive.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Nov 15 - 03:12 AM

Rugby league or rugby union?

Two inning matches, one day or 20/20?

The London Philharmonic Orchestra with a Vaughan Williams collection or John Connolly singing his Fiddler's Green?

Joan Baez singing Geordie or U2 playing Bloody Sunday?

Elvis Costello singing Veronica at a punk venue or singing Veronica when he supported MacColl and Seeger?

Sadly, nobody has the copyright on the word folk any more than the word music. 1954 was a year when a lot happened but nothing of note in committees set up to analyse music. Many pop, rock, blues etc songs relate a moment in time or reflect a community and its people. Many traditional songs are about the same.

Shagging, unrequited shagging and dying from cannonball wishing you were shagging.

We call it song, regardless.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,ripov
Date: 15 Nov 15 - 08:23 PM

that is "amateurs" in the sense that they have a deep love of their subject.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Ripov
Date: 15 Nov 15 - 08:17 PM

>Last Guest
Couldn't agree more. Just as in music, while there are dedicated amateurs keeping the individual forms of sport (1954 definition) alive (even if they have the occasional disagreement), the bulk of it , just like the music industry, is simply a way of getting bums on seats and so increase the industry's profits. But at least the music industry is honest about the fact that it's only show business.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Larry The Radio Guy
Date: 15 Nov 15 - 08:01 PM

Sorry about my rather 'fuzzy' (is that the right word?) joke, Jim.   What I was trying to imply was that because I forgot that I had started this thread (i.e. the author), and years later people are still discussing it, maybe it's entered the 'oral tradition'....and now this thread meets at least some of the criteria of traditional.   Yeah....I know.   Not really all that funny..

But onto the discussion: I have a lot of respect for Jim Carroll's point of view here.   I think that any genre of music has to have some kind of defining features.   I also think that it's always valuable to keep discussing them, as you see how defining features change over the years.

For the longest time I was always fighting with the use of the word "cover version".....since I knew it's origin.   And the fact that now it's used to describe any song anybody sings that the singer didn't write (or wasn't written specifically for that singer)......drove me crazy. Now I just find it irritating, and I no longer go off on long discourses.

So I have to accept that the term has changed.

Maybe that's happened with 'folk music'.

But I haven't really heard any compelling arguments within this thread to suggest that 'traditional' as a category is really any different today than it ever was.

I think "Happy Birthday" and "Old MacDonald had a Farm" are traditional. So are those ballads that Jim and other folklorists have collected and annotated.

Eleanor Rigby?   Everybody knows it's a Beatles song.   Six Days on the Road?   Lots of variants, it's true.....but most people think of one specific recording (whether it's Dave Dudley or Taj Mahal or Colleen Peterson) when they hear or sing it.

Anyway.......I really don't know much about traditional music, but those are my thoughts.   For now, anyway (until they change....but then, that's part of the 'tradition').

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Nov 15 - 07:22 PM

"Makes it a folk song by at least one definition. W
So if someone gets up i a fol;k club and sings Puccini's Nessun Dorma it becomes a folk song - or when opera singer Kiri ti Kanawa sings Wouldn't it be Luverly, it becomes opera??
Silly definition - is it actually documented anywhere?
Bob Davenport used to sing Kurt Weill's,and Maxwell Anderson's September Song' at folk clubs ( basically to get up the noses of us "purists" I suspect) - a folk song - I don't think so.
Really don't know enough about My Brother Sylvest to comment - don't think there are hard and fast rules on individual songs - there are certainly borderline cases, but not, I suggest, among modern pop songs, for the reason I mentioned.
The point I am making about these songs is basically if you are going to understand them we need to be fairly specific on what we mean - they carry far too much historical and cultural baggage to just abandon an existing and well documented definition and not replace it with something we can all (in general terms) agree upon.
The present definition has never been seriously challenged - it certainly has never been replaced.
What has happen is that the a small number of people have decided that the terms 'folk' and 'tradition' have proved inconvenient to their particular interests and ambitions and have decided to hang their own particular flavour-of-the-month on a hook that has been occupied for well over a century and a half, without having the courtesy to explain why, other than "folk/tradition is what I choose to call it".   
It's far too important an art/cultural form to allow that to happen without a fight.
Sing what you want, but if you have any respect for the music, at least try to understand it, or allow those of us to wish to to do so without abusive terms like "purist" or "finger-in-ear" or "
"folk police" or even "folk fascist".
I think I know what folk/traditional song is - have spent over half a century trying to come to terms with it.
I out experience, the older source singers knew that the songs I believe to be folk/traditional were unique and had their own terms to describe what they sang.
If they were, I am wrong fine - show us where they/I am are and I'll make arrangements to pack of our large library of books on the folksong, ballads, folklore, music, dance tales, superstitions... (all related disciplines)   to Oxfam and fill the shelves with commended alternative - so far, nobody has come up with zilch.
Not very convincing.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Guest
Date: 15 Nov 15 - 05:46 PM

No such thing as Football,Cricket, Rugby, Baseball, Basketball,etc it's all sport, Football supporters are just narrow minded bigots.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Nov 15 - 04:46 PM

Mike Harding used to sing My Brother Sylvest in folk clubs. Makes it a folk song by at least one definition.

Bob Dylan songs that charted are pop songs on Radio 2 in the day and folk songs on Radio 2 on a Wednesday evening.

Songs written by Richard Thompson (usually genred pop or rock on iTunes and Amazon) appear on websites of traditional Irish songs, ditto many MacColl songs.

No such thing as pop. No such thing as folk. It's all music. Jim Carroll likes it to get old men warbling out of tune pretending they learned it at their mother's knee and many American mudcatters think you had to sit cross legged with a flower in your hair forty eight years ago to call it folk.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 15 Nov 15 - 01:32 PM

Here's one for you, Jim.
In the 40s and 50s, even into the 60s a well-loved pub song at the time, if somewhat racist, was 'My Brother Sylvest'. It apparently had many outings during the Sods' Operas of WWII and existed in a variety of versions. Nobody could remember where it came from, how old it was or who wrote it, not that they cared anyway. Could that have been in any way a 'Traditional' or 'folk' song? I don't want to get involved yet again in these pointless arguments but still would be curious to see what you think.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Nov 15 - 01:23 PM

"PLEASE DON'T TRY!!! "
Why not?
Lily of Laguna is a British coon song, a love song that originally included a racist and stereotyped image of black people. It was written in 1898 by English composer Leslie Stuart.
Not a folk song, however popular it was.
Reg's comments were on taste, nnot on definition - à chacun son goût ( "to each his own taste").
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Nov 15 - 12:31 PM

> you lot can't even define it and PLEASE DON'T TRY!!!

If there's a desire to discuss it intelligently, one can define anything.

The kind of music that interests people like Jim and Steve and me and some others is undeniably real and, in various ways and shifting degrees, different from other kinds of music. Not so different as an apple from an orange, but different.

Anyway, illuminating discussions of "folk music" don't founder on slapping labels on things. If Mr. X calls "Finnegan's Wake" a "folk song" and Ms. Y doesn't, they can still talk intelligently about "Finnegan's Wake." Or they can wrangle pointlessly.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 15 Nov 15 - 11:18 AM

Just concurring with the views of Reg Hall, an early stalwart of the tradition- re- 'Lily of Laguna', the views I mentioned were expressed 50 years ago- if it's a good song, who cares if it is traditional or not- you lot can't even define it and PLEASE DON'T TRY!!!
Tell you what, given the choice of your two examples Brian, although I'd rather hear 'Lily of Laguna' sung well, I'd go for the drunk in the bar- the Child ballads are an important body of work but the chances of anyone giving a meaningful and sympathetic delivery of a Child ballad in 2015 are slim (at least 50 years ago there was a real possibility of hearing ballads in a social context)
There's always an exception of course delivered vibrantly to what is after all a tiny minority of the population- ie folkies)...
but such material is far better left to the academics these days I think.

It's maybe regrettable but that's the real world- 'folk music' is supposed to be for the folk after all- why do we put up these pointless barriers? -just off to the pub (where the folk spend time)- will probably do some Delia Murphy songs.
And in my experience, traditional singers never differentiated between these alleged 'genres' of music- they didn't know they were singing folk songs till song collector TOLD them & put all their songs in tidy little slots!

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Nov 15 - 10:14 AM

"The Star Spangled Banner" is "traditional" in the everyday sense: it's been around a long"
"Traditional" when applied to music has a specific meaning in the same way "classical" does - though both terms can have other meanings whe applied elsewhere.
Traditional in our sense refers to a process of transmission, remaking - nothing to do with how long it has been around.
Irish Travellers were still making traditional songs in the 1970s which were being absorbed into the communities, changed and adapted and in a relatively short time, becoming anonymous -
The Star Spangled Banner was written by Francis Scott Key in 1812 and has basically remained the same.
Should parodies of it b made, become accepted and be absorbed into the communities, they might be described as being 'traditional'
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Nov 15 - 09:56 AM

I concur with Brian.

But part of the whole problem (if that's what it is) is that "Traditional" doesn't mean "traditional."

"The Star Spangled Banner" is "traditional" in the everyday sense: it's been around a long, long time, and people still sing it, especially on certain occasions (as before major-league baseball games).

But capital-T "Traditional" means having some age, but it also means having notable variations in text and/or tune, and no recognized standard version.

A folkie chestnut like "Tom Dooley," of course, can be both. In one sense, the song was traditional because it had a long, if geographically limited, existence in various versions with no "standardized" text or tune. Once it became a copyrighted revival hit, text, tune, and timing (and to some extent instrumentation: who plays it on the piano?)became essentially frozen. Those who know the song see any variations in performance as mere variations from a well-established norm. The copyrighted "Tom Dooley" is "Traditional" only by special pleading, even if it has "Traditional" roots.

One-word labels with no context or elaboration are notoriously misleading.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Nov 15 - 09:14 AM

I'd have sworn it was traditional."
Sorry Larry - isn't that what's being discussed?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Larry The Radio Guy
Date: 15 Nov 15 - 08:49 AM

I had forgotten I had started this post 3 1/2 years ago. If it hadn't been 'written down' with my name on it, I'd have sworn it was traditional.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 15 Nov 15 - 07:29 AM

"a pub singer giving full value to 'Lily of Laguna' in the public bar is a lot more interesting and meaningful than someone droning Child ballad number whatever it is in the folk club upstairs."

A comparison so loaded as to be useless. What if I were to reverse that bias and ask you to choose between a vibrant, committed performance of 'My Son David', 'Henry Martin, or 'Tiftie's Annie' in the room upstairs, versus a drunk in the bar bawling an out-of-tune rendition of some music hall song or other?

Incidentally, where exactly are these public bars where people sing 'Lily of Laguna'?

There's my bit of purist vitriol.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Nov 15 - 07:11 AM

Meant to add that the chance of a modern pop song becoming traditional in virtually non-existent as composers carefully place a (c) next to them to make sure they don't
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Nov 15 - 07:08 AM

Despite what "folk is whatever I choose to say it is" folkies claim, virtually all the traditional singers we recorded over thirty-odd years were careful to differentiate between folk songs, pop songs, country and western songs.... and traditional songs, even to the extent of having their own identifying name for them.
Of course - they might have got it all wrong!!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 15 Nov 15 - 06:00 AM

Just picking up this thread again and inviting vitriol from purists everywhere, I just found an old 'Collector EP with brief notes by Reg Hall.
The gist of his totes then was (and I doubt if he's changed his views 50 years later) that a pub singer giving full value to 'Lily of Laguna' in the public bar is a lot more interesting and meaningful than someone droning Child ballad number whatever it is in the folk club upstairs.
Academic study is fine, and most of us are very grateful for research into the tradition, but it's not real life, is it

I'm with Reg 100pc on this.....

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Phil
Date: 18 Nov 14 - 06:59 PM

My own definitions have changed over the decades but at present I'd say yes.
Pop(ular) = Percent of market share. We keep charts. In America it's Billboard, Goldmine, etc.
Traditional = We have occasions. Happy Birthday; Land of Hope and Glory; The Bridal Chorus; Auld Lang Syne; For He's a Jolly Good Fellow. Going by sheer playcount and participation this probably the more 'popular' music.

In different days and times "Lay My Head Beneath a Rose" and "Danny Boy" were both pop sheet music hits and traditional funeral songs.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: ripov
Date: 18 Nov 14 - 05:16 PM

The point may have been made before, this is a long thread, but surely it depends as much on how you define "pop" as how you define "traditional" or "folk". Is it to be "popular"? Then most traditional tunes were - and remain - popular. That's why we keep playing and singing them. But ask a teenager if they like "pop" music; you will be told "No, I like rock/metal/rap/techno/ballads/indie"; "pop" appears to be used as a a derogatory term for all the (light? I don't know a word to describe the whole gamut - perhaps it IS "pop"!) music they dislike, and particularly for commercial products of the music industry (except the ones they like!).

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: cptsnapper
Date: 18 Nov 14 - 08:32 AM

I think that Eleanor Rigby might eventually be included in the traditional canon

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Desi C
Date: 18 Nov 14 - 05:48 AM

Seems to be mostly down to interpretation. On one hand the glib answer would be the clue is the term 'POP' but in recent years in Folk Clubs I've heard songs my The Kinks, because many of their songs were about the London 60's fashion & culture be somewhat Folkyfied, in the folk sense of music being of the times and culture. perform a lot of Trad Irish songs, where trad usually related to old songs by anonymous writers. But again in rcent year songs snch as The Town I loved So Well, The Rare Auld Times, even Dirty Old town ( not even Irish or Anon) become regularly listed and referred to as trad. So is it down to age of the song or definition, or perhaps where, when and how it's sung??

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Nov 14 - 01:55 PM

It's interesting that the two words should have grown to have such a distinction, since they originally meant the same thing, i.e. music of the people, which is pop(ular) from Latin and folk (volk) from German. And from Greek we have lay (laiko) music -- the music of the people, as opposed to the music of the church or the clergy. There may be others, borrowed from other languages, but those are all that I can think of offhand.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 17 Nov 14 - 01:45 PM

Of course popular songs have been taken up by folk singers and altered through the traditions of the folk process countless times. Paul Oliver and Abbott-Seroff are examples of people who have documented examples. I'll add a possible one that I've never seen anyone mention: the "Corn Shucking Time" that Jimmie Strothers knew was possibly influenced by the "Corn Shucking Time" that was used in His Honor The Barber.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,veteran
Date: 17 Nov 14 - 01:20 PM

Who cares if it's folk or traditional or pop- if it's a good song, it's a good song. Threads like this run a severe risk of having to define your terms and none of us want that, do we?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 12 Sep 12 - 06:42 AM

And that was 300

Don T.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 12 Sep 12 - 06:39 AM

Wrong question! Or else a pack of wrong answers!

1. A pop song CAN become traditional over 100 - 200 years, if it survives that long.

2. It can only become traditional pop, never folk, because it simply isn't folk.

"Traditional" is not a word that applies just to one kind of music in one culture. It is the application of the descriptor "Folk" which provides that link, and even with that the boundaries are fuzzier than some people would like.

Whether, or not, the pop song will ever become traditional is a matter for those in the future who choose to apply it as a descriptor because they wish to preserve it. Given the origins, it is extremely unlikely that they would want to call it anything other than "Traditional Pop".

Don T

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 12 Sep 12 - 05:12 AM

"a bit of typical US-centricity, the assumption that what goes over there must be commonplace worldwide."

I recall another discussion akin to this one where a number of US posters argued that the CND sign meant simply 'Peace' in ALL COUNTRIES, and absolutely and resolutely refused to believe that this was not the case for those of us in the UK, where it is known historically as the 'anti-nuclear' sign. So odd!

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Don Wise
Date: 12 Sep 12 - 04:43 AM

@ Phil Edwards: ...but presumably only with the 4 standard verses?

As an aside, back in the 1950s a british skiffle group recorded a 'UK' version of the lyrics.......bloody awful!!

A further aside- schoolkids in Jamaica, Zimbabwe etc. sing Bob Marley songs..........


Now and again in the course of this thread reference has ben made to the 1954 definition of folk music. With hindsight it must be clear to many people that,even back in 1954, that definition was teetering precariously on the brink of obsolescence. Since then things have taken giant steps forward..........

Oral transmission: I suspect this is inversely proportional to literacy rates. Where literacy rates are generally high there is less demand for oral transmission. Also, whilst Mudcatters will probably have high scores here, how many parents these days sing to their kids? How many take the time to go through not only nursery rhymes but also kids songs - of whatever provenance? How many take the easy way out and plonk the brats in front of the goggle-box/PC, give them cds of modern childrens songs and leave them to their own devices or consider this a responsibilty of the kindergarten?

Variations to lyrics and melody: It's difficult to see how variations can occur these days, given the availability of song and tune books, cds, YouTube and websites like MUDCAT.....This applies not just to 'folksong' but also to pop and rocksongs. We no longer need to grapple with lousy pronunciations mumbled into a wall of sound on crackly vinyl discs, instead we just google around till we find what we want on the net or we post a query on, for example, Mudcat and receive the correct lyrics almost before you can blink. From this viewpoint the 'lack of variations' of pop/rocksongs sung at parties, campfires etc. is understandable. Even if we can't find the lyrics as text there's likely to be a YouTube video available where we can take them down in the 'traditional way'.

Copyright: This is finite and, if some people get their way, will become obsolete. Furthermore, it only really comes into play in connection with recordings,big concerts etc. If Mudcatters want to sing 'Da-Da-Da' to their kids and they, in turn, pass it on to their kids (andsoonandsoon......) the fact that the song was 'composed' and subject to copyright will slip into the background, even assuming that the name of the composer(s) was known. Whilst songwriters like Chuck Berry, Lennon&McCartney,Jagger&Richards et al are these days more or less household names, who knows who wrote, for example, "The Rose" (I know, I noted it when I copied the lyrics) or, referred to above, "Da-Da-Da"? (I think I know, but I don't know who translated it).
Those who, with apologies to Kant, invoke a 'categoric negative' in terms of pop/rocksongs eventually acquiring some sort of 'traditional' status are, to my mind, grasping at virtual straws.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 12 Sep 12 - 02:35 AM

those unimaginative sorts who have problems understanding why people would enjoy singing about things that are 3000 miles away

Not my point at all. I was just pointing out that the song is specifically part of a US schoolchild's heritage, not the heritage of schoolchildren everywhere.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Sep 12 - 02:01 AM

Bob will know it, Stim, & for the same reason I do ~~ he is a folkie.

I am sure many people know the song worldwide: particularly those into folk; & including many children.

But I still think the original assertion, *that it is known to every child internationally,* was an absurd overstatement ~~ a bit of typical US-centricity, the assumption that what goes over there must be commonplace worldwide. I have no precise statistics to hand, obviously. But if you can organise a survey among British children which will demonstrate that more than one child in a thousand has ever even heard of it [or of Woody Guthrie either, for that matter], I promise to give you a nice red apple. As distinct from the situation in US, where, as many above have confirmed, it appears to be taught as part of the regular educational curriculum.

~M~

*"1. This Land Is Your Land (known by every school child internationally)" was what Stringsinger posted on 6 Sep, 1154 am. To which I rejoin, yet again, NO IT'S NOT.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 11 Sep 12 - 03:02 PM

That last was me.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Sep 12 - 03:01 PM

I don't miss the point, MthGM. I happen to think that there is good reason to believe that "This Land is Your Land" is known and sung all around the world, and by a fair number of children, at that.

Here is something I pulled from the Wikipedia page:

Arlo Guthrie tells a story in concerts on occasion, of his mother returning from a dance tour of China, and reporting around the Guthrie family dinner table that at one point in the tour she was serenaded by Chinese children singing the song. Arlo says Woody was incredulous: "The Chinese? Singing "This land is your land, this land in my land? From California to the New York island?"

The page also includes verses of the song that have been rewritten to includes places in New Zeeland, India, and Namibia, to name a few.

If that does not suffice, the recently published "This Land Is Your Land
Woody Guthrie And The Journey Of An American Folk Song" by Robert Santelli and Nora Guthrie discusses this at greater length.

To resolve this properly, perhaps we should as Bob Davenport if he knows the song.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Sep 12 - 05:02 AM

Thanks, Raymond.

Nevertheless, Stim, I think you miss the point about "This Land". The distances involved are an irrelevance. It is just that someone above claimed that it was a song known worldwide by all children; whereas, whatever Raymond's recollections, most children here, unlike yours, are not taught it at school, and are entirely unaware of its very existence ~~ no matter how wide the ocean, how high the sky!.

~M~

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,raymond greenoaken
Date: 11 Sep 12 - 04:34 AM

sorry Michael and everybody – I was that Guest.

>GUEST ~~ You say you knew "Your land, my land" when you were in primary school. Did you actually learn it at primary school?: in which case you will probably have had a Guthrie-loving teacher. Or was it one of those ubiquitous radio, cubs&scouts, back of bus songs you mention from the time? It makes a difference...<

Can't actually remember, Michael. I associate it with school, somehow, but I rather doubt that our Miss foster was a Guthrie enthusiast. Probably it was in the air.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 10 Sep 12 - 03:51 PM

You're welcome, Spleen Cringe. If you're still around, check out "Ethnic Music" on the pulldown menu under "Dulcimers" for a real treat! Though the discussion is not the most satisfying, I've been googling some of the references, Bob Davenport, for instance, and have found good things to listen to.

For those unimaginative sorts who have problems understanding why people would enjoy singing about things that are 3000 miles away, I will point out that California is nearly 3000 miles from the New York Island. I doubt it helps you, though.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Sep 12 - 06:52 AM

GUEST ~~ You say you knew "Your land, my land" when you were in primary school. Did you actually learn it at primary school?: in which case you will probably have had a Guthrie-loving teacher. Or was it one of those ubiquitous radio, cubs&scouts, back of bus songs you mention from the time? It makes a difference...

~M~

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Sep 12 - 06:08 AM

>I think - and I mean this respectfully - that there's 3000 miles of ocean between a lot of us here and the country Woody Guthrie was writing in and about. I'd never heard "This land" until I encountered the Internet.<

I knew it when I was in primary school (West Northumberland), as did just about all of my pals. We're talking late '50s/early '60s here. Folk songs were ubiquitous during my childhood – on the radio, in school, at the Cubs and the Scouts, local concert parties, in the back of the bus. Did I live in a folk oasis?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: theleveller
Date: 10 Sep 12 - 04:20 AM

"I am appalled that anyone who pronounces about 'folk music' and admits to never having heard of him is very sad"

Well I wasn't aware that I had "pronounced" about anything - merely expressed an opinion about what I think is ignorant and boorish behaviour. Sorry if that doesn't suit you, Jim, but I expect you'll get over it.

The fact that I haven't come across Mr Davenport during my 48 years around the folk scene probably says more about him than me.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 10 Sep 12 - 02:52 AM

Thanks for the link Stim. I knew this thread would make good in the end.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 09 Sep 12 - 10:46 PM

If you use phrases like "In the tradition" or "In the oral tradition" please define it in some way, be it geographically, ethnically, or culturally . Or something. There is no single "tradition"., there are lots of them, in lots of places, unless they've disappeared.

For instance, here is a new website that offers recordings from a tradition that I am very excited about: Paul Gifford's Collection of Old Time Music from Michigan and the Great Lakes .

I am excited about it because I am from Michigan (though I seldom admit it unless I have been drinking) and he managed to record music from a tradition that I remember from my childhood, before it disappeared(the music, though my childhood seems now to be gone, too).

The thing is, it disappeared so completely, that I'd forgotten that it was ever there. And when it was there, I didn't recognize it for what it was, and, at least by reputation, I am a "folkie".

Paul is not an ethnomusicologist or an academic, he's just a guy who was really interested in what was out there, so he wasn't looking for "ballads", or such things--the result is he has a collection of folk music that shows us how diverse the sources for "folk music" really are--

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 09 Sep 12 - 05:41 PM

Regarding "This Land", not all people from urbanized communities fed on piped in pop music will know this song but it continues to be circulated in other environments and in this instance, I mean this respectfully, it has been around with variants for some time as Woody would have wanted it to be and of course reality is in the eye of the beholder.

I think - and I mean this respectfully - that there's 3000 miles of ocean between a lot of us here and the country Woody Guthrie was writing in and about. I'd never heard "This land" until I encountered the Internet.

Several of your other examples fall into the dreaded 1954 Definition without any trouble at all - few if any collectors believed that all folk songs were composed collectively or anonymously and preserved only within the oral tradition.

Defining "folk song" is a fool's errand - some "folk songs" are only found in one variant; some are found on multiple broadsides but without any variation; some are found on broadsides and don't appear in the oral tradition at all... Personally I'm happy to say that "folk songs" = "all the songs collected by folk song collectors, with a few completely subjective exceptions and additions" and leave it at that. It's not as if we're going to risk running out of folk songs if we define them too narrowly, after all.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 09 Sep 12 - 04:56 PM

it occurs to me that this is nothing much to do with the subject & maybe you'd all better get back to the subject- apologies for any failure to return.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 09 Sep 12 - 04:54 PM

re my non-return to Bob Davenport's considered criticism of a very boring singer, called Smyth my memory tells me?- have been busy playing the music after my own fashion, folk, pop or whatever. When people have paid £5plus or more like 2 shillings in those days! a little background is fine, but not a whole pre-summary of what was already a long song is not what is required- and it still happens- a joke is one thing but not what this man did. I have admired Bob ever since and I am appalled that anyone who pronounces about 'folk music' and admits to never having heard of him is very sad. I wouldn't have the nerve or the honesty to react as Bob did that night.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 09 Sep 12 - 10:40 AM

"A folk song is one in which many have taken it up and found variants of it.

I can think of dozens of Folk Songs where this isn't the case."

Please offer examples of this .

In aural tradition in rural areas, songs are taught to people in informal ways.
That's how they get disseminated.

Formal ways may or may not constitute the aural process by which traditions are learned but I see no distinction between the methods of teaching.

Folk traditions can be formalized in their teaching methods by carriers of tradition.

People study music in traditional circles as would a student at a music academy.

Regarding "This Land", not all people from urbanized communities fed on piped in pop music will know this song but it continues to be circulated in other environments and in this instance, I mean this respectfully, it has been around with variants for some time as Woody would have wanted it to be and of course reality is in the eye of the beholder.
The values might be different in terms of what is acceptable or not, but the best teaching is when the student is in the same room with the teacher.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Sep 12 - 01:42 AM

There is a large brown insect on my window screen, and it is much more interesting than this thread has gotten to be. Please everyone, endeavor to be more interesting, or it would be best to let it die(the thread, not the insect).

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Brian Peters
Date: 08 Sep 12 - 02:48 PM

This Land Is Your Land (known by every school child internationally)

I rather doubt that this is the case in many places outside the USA - where I believe the song is taught to every school child. Whether that constitutes 'living tradition' or not may depend on how you view, for instance, the formal teaching of old playground games, as opposed to just letting them carry on unmolested in the schoolkids' 'underground' (which is the whole point of those games if you ask me).

Old Dan Tucker, Dixie and Angelina Baker are good examples precisely because they're relatively old, and we can witness their adoption. Country Roads might be a good candidate (it has a very catchy chorus), but with the generation who first popularised it still very much alive, it's surely too early to say.