Can a pop song become traditional?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 03:59 PM

"The typical oral repertoire contains community songs, children's rhymes, football chants, pop songs from parents' youth/own youth, TV ad jingles, school songs, hymns, popular carols"

Indeed Steve, the oral tradition can never be declared dead until people have finally stopped singing 'Happy Birthday to You'. But... Hymns? My kids (19 and 25) don't know a single hymn and would struggle with carols beyond 'Jingle Bells' (chorus only) and just possibly the first couple of line of 'Away in a Manger'. TV ads? I could reel off quite a few ad jingles from the days of my childhood, but those will die with our generation.

It's changing all the time - what was true for you and me isn't necessarily true for our kids. Children's rhymes? Yes, still going strong, apparently. Football chants? Well, I have an interest here as a 1970s fanatic who still gets to a few games a season. I know that new chants are still being composed, and that several of the old ones are still going strong. But the singers are fewer in number and the repertoire smaller. Deafening tannoy music drowns out a lot of the attempts at singing - even at a small club like Stockport County, never mind Old Trafford. And when the Stretford End is still half empty ten minutes before kick-off (compared to the days when it was packed an hour and a half beforehand and the empty time was filled by singing) then you know things are different.

There's no reason or remote possibility that things will or should stay the same, but there's no point in trying to pretend that nothing's changed.

Incidentally, to Larry Saidman, thanks for coming back to the thread to comment, and for having started it off without an existing axe to grind.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 03:55 PM

Thanks for your answer, Brian. It's an interesting theory, but you haven't provided any evidence that it's true. l.

From what I've seen over the years, the opposite might in fact be true.

Modern technology allows people to listen to the music that they like much more often, and much more intensely, than was ever possible in the past. This makes it possible for them to memorize much more, and much faster, than every before.

The other night, a friend took me to a dance club (it has been twenty years, at least, since I'd been in one) and I heard the dancers singing along, word for word, with recordings that were so fast that I couldn't even follow them.

More remarkable, there were frequent occasions where the DJ, though use of technology that I have only heard about, cut out the vocal tracks, leaving the MC and the crowd singing to the instrumental track. The MC seemed to be improvising, as well, but I wasn't familiar enough with the material to know.

Something else that I experienced, a number of years ago, still lingers with me to this day, for similar reasons. I was attending a concert by a fairly popular "Alternative Rock" band. It was one of the first concerts in a tour supporting their new album, which had been out for about a week.   I felt a bit on top of things because I'd gotten the album and listened to it a few times.

The crowd sang along with every song, including everything from the new album.

I was surprised, but not as much as I was a few weeks later, when I heard my 8 year old sing the entire album acapella.

So, Brian, before I believe you,I would very much like to see some hard data.

I am also curious to know how many people day know "Lord Bateman", and how many of them learned it by listening over and over to recordings.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Bettynh
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 03:29 PM

"One of the many things that has occurred in the last century or so that has stemmed the flow of oral tradition is the acceleration of fashion change, mainly due to modern technology. Something comes into fashion and rapidly disappears as something else comes along to replace it. Consequently only the very memorable items take a hold whereas prior to this they had much longer to take a hold."

Yes, but it doesn't disappear anymore. It just gets archived on youtube. My kids can listen to the same recorded tunes that I did when I was small, and wax cylinders of 19th century music hall music is there, too. Currently, string band music is rather popular (Cornbread and Butter Beans)

Original archived recorded material is a click away. The Bristol Sessions

Somewhere out there, perhaps someone is learning Lord Bateman from Elizabeth Laprelle, who currently makes a living singing it (does that make it a pop song?)

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 03:27 PM

Good luck with your new thread, Larry. I think you've hit the nail on the head.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Larry The Radio Guy
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 03:17 PM

Stim, you mention that it takes more time to ask a question than to answer it...particularly related to this thread.

Yet.... looking at this very interesting thread (I'm with you, bettynh, when you say that threads like this keep bringing you back to mudcat).........I realize that I've probably asked the wrong question.

I'm really wanting to understand the 'living tradition' of music and that whole process and how we, the 'common people' put that into practice.

So for me to use terms like 'traditional' and 'folk music'....which are terms studied by musicologists and other academics, and expect people knowledgable in this field to make this 'living tradition' process lucid is probably not realistic.

The closest thing I can find is that Lord Bateman example....and it reminds me of how my father-in-law would take such pride in reciting, so passionately, certain poems like "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner". He grasped it so close to his soul; this was no commercial music (or poetry) industry putting words in his mouth.

And I think there are some similar (but different) processes happening today.   The songs I sang to my son when he was a baby. The songs that are sung in folk clubs, pubs, or legion halls that get people singing along.   No, they're not traditional in the academic sense.   But somehow they come close to people's hearts (if not their souls).

So what I think I need to do is start another thread focusing on what makes a song last. And what recent popular, rock'n roll, country, or so-called 'folk' songs seem to be on their way to becoming songs that will become part of such a singing 'tradition' (using the other definition of tradition, rather than the one embraced by musicologists).

Thanks everybody for your input....and Joe, I'm OK with closing this thread now (unless others want to keep it open).

-Larry

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 03:09 PM

Speak to you later - bed time - bloody aepnia
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 03:05 PM

For Jim

I must not make sweeping statements as fact when they are only opinion. Cut and Paste x99.

Ta, Jim.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Larry The Radio Guy
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 03:04 PM

Brian, what you say makes a lot of sense. And it complements the points that Jim Carroll and others are making. Certainly that Lancastrian woman has truly adapted that song (Lord Bateman) and it's exciting that she would bring it so 'close' to her.....and it obviously has a lot of meaning for her.   Even though that meaning may be more related to the context (i.e a song that was in the family) than to the content (the actual story).

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 03:03 PM

One of the many things that has occurred in the last century or so that has stemmed the flow of oral tradition is the acceleration of fashion change, mainly due to modern technology. Something comes into fashion and rapidly disappears as something else comes along to replace it. Consequently only the very memorable items take a hold whereas prior to this they had much longer to take a hold.

An example might be the minstrel troupes that started c1840, were the bees' knees for decades and didn't actually die out until the more PC 1960s.

However there is still a strong oral traditon of sorts with song. Generally only 'folk singers' and their children would count 'folk songs' in this. The typical oral repertoire contains community songs, children's rhymes, football chants, pop songs from parents' youth/own youth, TV ad jingles, school songs, hymns, popular carols

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 02:40 PM

"Why does it matter that a Lancastrian woman was able to remember 17 verses of 'Lord Bateman' in 1973?"

Because I've been arguing that only a tiny minority of people know even one verse of 'Johnny B. Goode', a song that's only 60-odd years old and which many of us have heard many times over on radio or TV ads. That Lancastrian woman was remembering in considerable detail a song that, at the time the collector Fred Hamer visited her, was over two hundred years old, at the very least.

She'd learned it from her elder sister eighty years previously, at a time when old songs were still being passed on from one generation to the next. Meanwhile there were hundreds of other instances of people in different localities being able to remember their own version of 'Lord Batemen' - most probably (we don't know in every case but it's a reasonable guess) as a result of it having been passed on within families or maybe peer groups.

The point being that, in a culture in which entertainment was largely self-generated - i.e. people singing for themselves - those people got to know their songs a lot better than people in our present-day culture, where most of us absorb our entertainment ready-made. Those people in the 19th century and before knew and loved their songs well enough to pass them on to their kids. How many parents today are singing their children to sleep with 'Johnny B. Goode', 'Yellow Submarine' or any of the other usual candidates for 'modern folk songs'?

So, I suggest, 'Lord Bateman' is a folk song (in the old sense, I stress once again) whereas 'Johnny B. Goode' is, not one now and unlikely to become one. Does that make sense?

"Interesting that Sam Lee is still turning up new stuff... "

Very interesting and inspiring. Mind you, Cecil Sharp wouldn't have expected Lancastrian women to be singing 17 verses of 'Lord Bateman' in 1973, never mind travellers in 2012. His predictions of the imminent extinction of the oral tradition were inaccurate in terms of timescale. A few pockets still survive, and it's no surprise that's happened in certain traveller communities. Thomas McCarthy is bloody good, too.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 01:44 PM

Why does it matter that a Lancastrian woman was able to remember 17 verses of 'Lord Bateman' in 1973?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 01:43 PM

Interesting that Sam Lee is still turning up new stuff...

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 12:35 PM

"One swallow, as they say..... "

Well, by 1973 we were well into Autumn, if not Winter, as far as folk song (in the old sense) is concerned. On the other hand, hundreds of independent versions of 'Lord Bateman' were still doing the rounds in various parts of the English-speaking world in the early part of the 20th century, which isn't bad for a song that was at least 150 years old by 1900.

The point I'm trying to make is that songs of recent composition, whether 'Johnny B. Goode' or 'Bluebirds', are never likely to 'become folksongs' in the way that 'Lord Bateman' did, because we just don't live in that kind of culture any more. 'Oh Susannah' probably has 'become a folksong' as Uncle Dave O suggested, but then that was written in 1847.

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

Hmm, threads like this one keep me coming back to Mudcat.

For your consideration (and outrage, I'm sure):

Shape-note singing sessions can be found in several areas of this country. All from a few books.


New England contra dance   Every second Saturday.


Talking about Doc Watson brings up lots of stuff - he was trained to tune pianos, grew up where people sang traditional ballads, made a living playing dances (traditional fiddle tunes on electric guitar), and had the voice and technique to sing and play whatever he wanted to. What he got paid for varied by time and place.


Johnny Cash: "Hurt" Again, he grew up, then married into, traditional singing (at least, the Carters were collectors of and benefactors from Appalachain song). By the end of his life, he was able to sing whatever he wanted to, and make it part of his music.

We don't have one tradition here in the USA, so it seems insulting to me to talk about restricting singing (or instrumental music) to a single profile.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 12:21 PM

For JimC-when I said that thing about songs starting, it would have been more useful had I said that each of those sources gave a reference point from which one, if they were of a mind, could view changes, dissemination, adaptation, and such things.

Larry Saidman--your long post above asked a good number of questions, any one of which would make an excellent research topic. With music, as with most things, it takes much less time to ask a question than to answer it.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: theleveller
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 11:10 AM

"but 'knowing the song' in the way that a Lancastrian woman was able to remember 17 verses of 'Lord Bateman' in 1973 is a different thing altogether. "

"A" woman. One swallow, as they say.....

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 10:36 AM

'Guest' was me, forgetting to check the cookie jar.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 10:34 AM

"I said continuum, rather than consistency."

I know what you said, but in making bald statements about this monolith that you call 'Folk' decreeing this or that, or wilfully ignoring working-class culture, or whatever, you are asking us to believe that ideas haven't evolved in the slightest.

"Harker's Fakesong simply tells it like it is"

'Fakesong' contains much interesting information, especially concerning the early ballad collectors and their sources, and it was no doubt a necessary corrective to lazy thinking. However, any kind of critical reading of the book reveals exactly the same kind of wishful-thinking and inconsistency that Harker accused the folk revivalists of. More knowledgable people than me (e.g. the editor of the New Penguin Book) scarcely take it seriously.

"...its social-class & its relationship to the folk-caste proper."

Some of the most detailed descriptions of the social role of folk songs in a rural community were, of course, written by Bob Copper, who was from exactly that community. But you knew that already.

"in 200 years' time you'll proably still find people singing 'There'll be Bluebirds Over the White Cliffs of Dover'"

Really? I asked my son, just for interest, whether he was familiar with the song. Yes, he said, from documentaries about World War 2. Did he know the words? None, beyond the title. If you'd asked me, I could have stretched as far as "Tomorrow, just you wait and see", and that would have been that. Maybe people will still be listening to those WW2 documentaries and hearing 'Bluebirds' in 200 years time (if there's anyone left alive), but 'knowing the song' in the way that a Lancastrian woman was able to remember 17 verses of 'Lord Bateman' in 1973 is a different thing altogether.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: theleveller
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 10:05 AM

"Are we downhearted??"

Well, no - but it may be that, having seen the fate of both albatross and ancient mariner, we will wake the morrow-morn sadder, if not wiser (wo)men.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 09:50 AM

to be assuming that there's been no evolution in thinking over a period of 100 years: between Sharp and his followers on the one hand, and A. L. Lloyd, Steve Roud, Georgina Boyes on the other.

I said continuum, rather than consistency. Of course there's been an evolution within the movement itself, but it's essentially unchanged in terms of its social-class & its relationship to the folk-caste proper. This is stated with depressing clarity Georgina Boye's Imagined Village whilst Harker's Fakesong simply tells it like it is too, and I dare say you'll find it in the Ladybird History of Music too which even carries an illustration of Sharp's epiphany in the green house. As I say there's no difference here between Sharps parlour arrangements and the more robust renderings of more earnest Traddies such as Bellamy or Michael Grosvenor Myer, neither of whom are exactly men of the sod. The Folk Veneer is still very much one of an academic elite, in which we refer to songs by their Roud Numbers. As I said in recent review of the Roud-complied VOTP volume:

...the academic aura of VOTP [....] is (I insist) not only anathema to the working-class craft & cunning of the men and women who created the songs in the first place, but is entirely incompatible with the earthy vernacular realism of their subject matter.

This is, to myself at least, the essence of the Folk Revival as an echo of the UK class-system, whatever it's political or philosophical aspirations might be otherwise. Right or Left, it makes no difference; it is still born of the very social priviledge it perpetuates to this day in the VOTP series, the Folk Degree Course or general middle-classness of the scene as a whole. The more middle class the Folk Club, the more Traditional it's likely to be. We've got Folk Clubs over here which are so working-class Traditional Songs are anathema.

Are we downhearted??

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 09:19 AM

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?

Oh Suzanna! q.e.d.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Ripov (not at home)
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 09:17 AM

How is it that so many who wish to imprison "folk" music so tightly that it can't turn round, are content with "pop" music being undefined? Which of course it isn't. Ask one of the "youngsters" whose absence is discussed elsewhere. I'm sure you'll be told firmly that many tunes/songs you've mentioned are not "pop". My kids and grandkids call me many names for using the term so loosely. Try it youselves at home!

And if "pop" music is more loosely defined as "that produced/distributed by the music industry", (pace Jim Carroll) what do we call the vast amount of music (that the musically illiterate, never mind "folkies", would never class as "folk" music) written and played by (inter alia) young musicians (the ones who don't go to folk clubs or sessions), and played in pubs and clubs to the delight of their peers?

Tirade over.

But of course what is actually being discussed is "popular" music, that is to say, the music of the people; and how could we ever think that "folk" music had its roots in music and song that ordinary people enjoyed, and even joined in with?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: theleveller
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 08:36 AM

"Flawed maybe, but neither S or A., but arrived at after a great deal of personal experience,"

Well, perhaps, but if, to continue my religious analogy, that committee was the Synod of Folk, setting the parameters of orthodoxy, then there will always be a Martin Luther nailing his articles to the cathedral door, to say nothing of the vast array of Ranters, Quakers, Muggletonians and Fifth Monarchists eager to turn the world upside down. And, of course, there will also be what I seem to be becoming: the folk agnostics and athiests, Perhaps, to plagiarise Mr Lennon, it would be better if we could

Imagine there's no folk songs,
It's easy if you try
Just lots of people singing
Great songs they can't define....

"The kind of songs that folk revivalists have generally concentrated on are a bit different, though. These were songs - many of which actually were the popular songs of the 18th century or before - that took such a hold on the populace that they were still being used for diversion, public and private, two hundred years later."

Yes, of course, but in 200 years' time you'll proably still find people singing 'There'll be Bluebirds Over the White Cliffs of Dover' still oblivious to the fact there have never been bluebirds in the UK.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Brian Peters
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 08:13 AM

theleveller wrote:

"...an artificial construct backed up by a spurious and arbitrary definition - Seems more likely that there have always been popular songs which are relevant to a particular time and context."

The second bit is partly true, but not the whole story. Roy Palmer's great book 'Working Songs' uses historical accounts to demonstrate that industrial protest songs were actually sung widely (including in pubs) during the period of their composition - which was welcome because previously all we had to go on were a host of printed broadsides and the occasionally suspect claims of Bert Lloyd - but we still don't have evidence that those songs were passed down through succeeding generations.

The kind of songs that folk revivalists have generally concentrated on are a bit different, though. These were songs - many of which actually were the popular songs of the 18th century or before - that took such a hold on the populace that they were still being used for diversion, public and private, two hundred years later. People in East Anglian pubs were still singing songs of the Napoleonic wars, or even older and more mysterious pieces of magic and terror, as late as the 1950s, when by which time any relevance to the singers' pesonal experience was long gone.

To make a similar claim for 'Johnny B. Goode', you'd have to imagine a future counterpart of Cecil Sharp or Jim Carroll finding people who not only remembered the song but could sing all of its verses (and remember those 18th century songs had many more verses) without any kind of prompt, in 2158. And for that to have happened in a world without sound recordings. And for all of those singers to be using subtly (or even wildly) different versions of the words and tune.

Blandiver wrote:
"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."

In that case you seem - in comments such as "it seems to be the aim of Folk to filter out what it sees as the 'pure stuff'" - to be assuming that there's been no evolution in thinking over a period of 100 years: between Sharp and his followers on the one hand, and A. L. Lloyd, Steve Roud, Georgina Boyes on the other. Rather difficult to sustain!

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: johncharles
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 08:07 AM

"too" evident

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: johncharles
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 08:03 AM

Traditional songs are only traditional because they are old. when they were first sung they would have been the popular songs of the time and the area in which they were sung. Printing allowed wider circulation, but recording and transmission are relatively new phenomena.
Collectors,academics and committed traditional singers have a particular view of the importance of old songs which does not seem to be shared by the vast majority of the population.
Deriding the majority for their poor taste and inactivity is a form of snobbery all to evident in academic circles.
john.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 07:47 AM

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.

As an ill-educated lower-caste oik content to ramble the hinterlands of Popular Music in general I have no problem whatsoever in Popular meaning the same in a Prof Child sense or a Tim Westwood sense or an Annie Nightingale sense. Pop is an umbrella heading for a myriad styles, idioms and genres that are born from the 50,000 year old tradition of Vernacular Music Making, and which continues with vigour to this day. Indeed, as long as there are Human Beings alive, there will be Vigorous Popular Music Making.

Folk, OTOH, is a prescriptively precious construct, hatched from on high, which seeks after an all too elusive purity, and when it finds it, it isolates it, refashions it into something it never was in its natural habit - be it Cecil Sharp making a parlour arrangement of The Seeds of Love, or Peter Bellamy singing Butter and Cheese and All. Both are equally contrived; both are an artitifice. Folk is a subject of fetishism for a crypto-religious elite that doesn't really connect with the 'real world'. This is, of course, an integral part of its appeal for the cranky, mad, eccentric, idiosyncratic, curmudeonly, misanthropic self-serving middle-class academic elite that typifies the Folk Scene even unto this day.

I say these things as a lover of Folk Music. But its worth remembering that whilst much Great Music is done by Folkies (I bet Cecil's arrangement of SOL was a cracker; just as Bellamy's various recorded renderings B&C&A are amongst my life's joys) there are no Proper Folk Songs ever sung in a Revival Context. The Proper Folk Songs are dead and gone with the Proper Folk Singers; and the Stone that Builders Rejected is the Cornerstone of all Future Vernacular Music Making on Planet Earth regardless of idiom.

Including Folk? Maybe...

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 07:31 AM

"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'."
Hit and run comments I'm afraid - your "typical pub" don't give a toss one way or the other; we've failed to engage them in what I believe to be their heritage, to our eternal shame.
The very music that some here seek to claim as 'folk' or 'traditional' has disenfranchised them from their heritage and turned them into armchair recipients of a culture rather than makers and interpreters.
"spurious and arbitrary definition"
Flawed maybe, but neither S or A., but arrived at after a great deal of personal experience, thought and discussion. The didn't get all right first time round, pioneers seldom do, but they gave us something to work with, as well as enough beautiful songs to fill several lifetimes.
If you want 'arbitrary' try Johnny B Goode - why not Olbla Dee, Oobla Da, or Viva Espania, or Funiculi Funicula.
The oft repeated misinformation that traditional singers didn't discriminate between types continues to be arrant nonsense no matter how many times iyt is repeted.
They had their own identification tag for these songs, the claimed them as their own, they had a familiarity with the subject matter that no outsider could possibly have - AND THEY VISUALISED AND IDENTIFIED WITH THEM IN A WAY THEY NEVER DID OR COULD BY THE STORE BOUGHT PRODUCTS THAT ARE BEING PRESENTED HERE AS 'FOLK AND TRADITIONAL.
Bye for now,
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 27 Aug 12 - 07:18 AM

"...Brand gave his collection". Sorry; name omitted above.

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~

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: 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: 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: 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 - 05:11 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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 - 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Don Firth
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 01:44 PM

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

Don Firth