What makes a new song a folk song?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Sep 14 - 04:13 PM

"Lack of author or age of song do not make a genre. Musical style does"
Style does not - origins and process does.
'folk' refers to the culture of a specific group
"exclusion of many excellent contemporary songs"
Copyright laws exclude many of them from belonging to the folk - whether they are excellent or crap.
Lst night a crowd of us watched a nearly ninety-year-old piper/singer/fluteplayer being interviewed.
He was well respected as a musician by his peers, was a part of the London Irish music scene in ts heyday, had performed with two of Ireland's leading ceili bands and was a long-term competition winner, having once been beaten into second place by one of Irland's greatest traditional pipers, Felix Doran.
He said he was extremely proud to see thousands of young musicians ener the scene, take up the music and become top class at it in a short time - far better than he could ever have hoped to be, even though he and many others of his generation might not like or approve of where they are taking the music.
We took that to be an indication that all is well with traditional music in Ireland today
All very satisfying
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 20 Sep 14 - 04:46 PM

"Lack of author or age of song do not make a genre. Musical style does"
Style does not - origins and process does.

OED defines genre thus Jim
'A style or category of art, music, or literature:'

I still think you're wrong on this one, my view is that origins and process makes the tradition, and the musical 'style' or 'form' is what evolves from that tradition. I know we are going to disagree on this one ;) but if you accept 'folk' as a genre, as we have to with the common understanding in today's society, then we are back to it being perfectly possible for a new song (or tune) that fits that style or form to be a folk song or tune.

John

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 20 Sep 14 - 07:09 PM

I've never been entirely comfortable with the Irish notion of making playing of certain instruments competitive. I took exams in violin, I certainly didn't "beat" other students.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 20 Sep 14 - 10:59 PM

I suppose I knew about trad folk almost from the off. my sister was at college at the same time as Tony Rose - i think he was at the mens college in exeter she was at the ladies college in Exmouth. there were loads of great traddy singers around Devon in those days - Paul Snow, Ken Penny, and of course the Yetties. there was Bob Cann.

and there were some pretty good trad singers who toured Anne Briggs, Johnny Handle, Cyril Tawney.
this was about 1964, and i was fifteen. i think it was a year later i saw the young tradition and the Watersons, and Fred Jordan - it was a sort of folk package tour - like the old rock and roll show. top of the bill was Bert Jansch.

i am not ignorant of traditional music's many virtues. its just that when you meet with ordinary English folk - like i did tonight at a pub gig. you must communicate or die. music they will dance to. music, they will sing to. music that entertains and amuses them. folk music. music for folks. your stuff is music that used to be folk music, before the folks got pissed off with it.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Sep 14 - 03:26 AM

"your stuff is music that used to be folk music, before the folks got pissed off with it."
Thanks for that lucid summing up of your understanding of folk music Al - it seems to go for a number of people here.
You have mine.
We spent a glorious week-end staying with Bob and Ella Cann on Dartmoor many years ago, in the company with two of Ireland's finest musicians, piper and concertina player Tom McCarthy and fiddle player Bobby Casey.
Thousands of Ireland's Ireland's young musicians and now coming to traditional music on the basis of their playing.
Toms children and grand-children are playing like veterans, his grandson Padraig won the Gradam National television award last year for musician of the year and the rest of the family are now in their third generation of representatives of Irish culture at its finest.
Happily, Ireland hasn't "got pissed off" with its heritage, I really am sad to learn England has.   
Perhaps we should leave it there before we really fall out. eh?
"I've never been entirely comfortable with the Irish notion of making playing of certain instruments competitive"
We are it total agreement on this one Muskie - competition should never be an incentive for involvement in music - I've seen too many youngsters driven away from music be not winning 'the glittering' prizes.
Ireland has now risen above all that, though there is one organisation which persists in making it their raison d'etre, happily, their influence appears to be very much on the wane.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 21 Sep 14 - 03:53 AM

Yeah but England hasn't got tired of learning traditional music. Neither has it got tired of classical music.

What we don't do though is treat it in the same way as France treats language.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 21 Sep 14 - 04:03 AM

"Ireland has now risen above all that, though there is one organisation which persists in making it their raison d'etre, happily, their influence appears to be very much on the wane".
no, they are not on the feckin wane, not round here anyway, because they have political friends in high places, they get loads of money, and they still are turning out homeogeonised competent players many of whom have an attitude problem brought about by being encouraged to be competitive.
If you go to northumberland you will see there is still a love for trad music, and the same applies to a lesser extent in east anglia.Iwould agree with you there is less respect in Fngland, BUT THE FOLK CLUB SITUATION, a seperate room where people go specifically to listen is rarer in ireland, the result is this.. in ireland   with rural pubs closing, suitable venues for showing respect for words are disappearing, instrumental irish music is half listened to but the opportunities for listening to songs and showing respect for lyrics is on the decline., too much amplified music that is treated as background sound.
as usual Jim speaks half truths and exaggerates both the decline of english trad music and the health of irish trad song, his analysis of the health of irish trad instrumental music is accurate apart from the remarks about a certain organisation being in decline.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Sep 14 - 04:29 AM

I deliberately didn't mention the organisation - many of its members, particularly its teachers, make an invaluable contribution to Irish music and continue to produce fine musicians.
In Clare, the influence of the competitions is negligible, which has, in my opinion, been a contributory factor to the success the County has achieved.
"as usual Jim speaks half truths and exaggerates"
As usual, the stupidly aggressive manner in which you insist on making your postings tends to negate anything of value you might have to say.
Once again - back off with your vendetta.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 21 Sep 14 - 06:49 AM

firstly this an interesting discussion but the thread has got too long - mycomputer takes ages to load it - could the moderators help us to continue it on a new thread please?

secondly - please stop talking to me like i'm sort of heathen. i have made it clear that i have spent the last fifty years passionately interested in folk music. i am not a mental defective because i don't agree with you, Jim.

I understand you position - i think. i am willing to be corrected on this point. politeness costs nowt.

i get so much shit from traddies. every time i see Paul Downes, he goes on about me singing 'in an American accent'. Bollocks! My mum sang in American accent. Ian Cambell's Dad did. His idol was Al Jolson. God knows what my Mum's singing mentor was but I can see her now when I was a kid singing as she did the chores Slowboat to China. Martin Carthy has his family traditions. I have mine - and they go all the way back to my parents. which I bet is more than he can say.

Itry to deal with the world as is. And I want people to sing and dance to my music as naturally as they breathe air. When I write a funny song. I want them to laugh because its funny - not because its 'funny song' like some bloody ossified joke from Shakespeare, that some bloody twat behind you at Stratford laughs very loud at because he wants to tell the world that he's been clever enough to recognise a joke! Think Bread and Cheese, the Molecatcher......

And Dick, I love the fact that you squeezebox boys have so much dedication that you spend thousands on instruments! I once asked Keith Kendrick about his two machines. One was an anglo - he'd spent about eight grand on that. he looked at the other one suspiciously and said , well that one WAS expensive.......

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Sep 14 - 07:13 AM

" please stop talking to me like i'm sort of heathen"
Not my intention Al - in spite of the fact that I find statements like "your stuff is music that used to be folk music, before the folks got pissed off with it" bothe offensive and Attila the Hun-ish
I'm not surprised you get shit from traddies like Paul Downes I'd be happy to support him if it were practical.
You don't like shit, stop dishing it out - heat - kitchen and all that - goes for politeness too!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 21 Sep 14 - 12:13 PM

well if it gives offence - it shouldn't. because it is in fact witty, descriptive and apposite, whereas your view of the entire non traddy fundamentalist population seems to regard them as untermenschen whose folk culture is unworthy of the name.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 21 Sep 14 - 01:18 PM

"as usual Jim speaks half truths and exaggerates"
As usual, the stupidly aggressive manner in which you insist on making your postings tends to negate anything of value you might have to say.
Once again - back off with your vendetta.
Jim Carroll
there is no vendetta , if you stopped posting inacurracies as if they were truths, i wouldnt bother to answer your half truths., any ggresiuon is in the eyes of the beholder[ you].

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Sep 14 - 02:00 PM

"folk culture is unworthy of the name."
sighhhhhhh
It never has been "unworthy" Al - saying an apple isn't an orange is not condemnatory in any way - it's simply stating that one isn't the other. some people like both
Your music does not fit into any definition of 'folk' no matter how you stretch the term.
Joking or not, I very much doubt if you can claim of public support for what you do than I can - both very much minority activities in the general scheme of things.
What we are discussing is a hostile takeover of the folk scene.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 21 Sep 14 - 02:22 PM

Jim. I have been part of the "folk scene" more years than I can think and how it can be subjected to a hostile takeover is beyond me. Diehard traditional librarians are made welcome to my knowledge, you just don't own the word folk that's all.

There's no need to be hostile there's no need to try to take over. Folk is a broad church and a broad musical genre.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Sep 14 - 02:48 PM

People who would sit singers like Fred Jordan, to sit and the back and watch how it's done and who write off over half a century's work as "diehard traditional librarianship trying to own the folk world" is as hostile as it gets as far as I'm concerned Muskie - especially as many of them (not pointing a finger) couldn't find their folk arses with both hands.
Nice to be made welcome in a revival I helped to set up though - leaves one with a warm glow.
Not one of you have responded to the damage you have done with the confusion and the unlikely event of being taken seriously by those who could ring the changes needed to the folk scene - I find such indifference pretty hostile
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 21 Sep 14 - 03:03 PM

well if it gives offence - it shouldn't

Not really up to you to say whether something you've said is offensive or not, is it?

And if your definition of 'folk' is down to its appeal to ordinary people -

music they will dance to. music, they will sing to. music that entertains and amuses them. folk music. music for folks.

- does this make Justin Bieber a folk artist? If not, why not?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 21 Sep 14 - 05:33 PM

no justin doesn't gig English pubs. if one of his songs were usable, i'd use it with English folk, and my experience of gigging English folk clubs for fifty years would transform it into folk music. cos i'm an English folksinger - using the techniques and learned over fifty years.

Fred Jordan no doubt did something somewhat similar in his lifetime. However he has been dead a middling number of years. He lived in a different era and led a different sort of life. and his gig , as I recall, was somewhat different.

No offence was intended. if people didn't get pissed off with Fred Jordan's repertoire no doubt, I would have got all the room up dancing last night to Ship in Distress - but ever the pragmatist, Ididn't attempt that.

circular argument. I have just disappeared up my own jaxie

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 21 Sep 14 - 05:35 PM

'not one of you have responded to the damage you have done with the confusion'.
You and Phil are the only ones who are confused, Jim.
The rest of us are quite clear that there is the Sao Paulo definition of 54, and there is the widely accepted genre/style that uses the same word. 54 of course is part of the wider usage.

'those who could ring the changes needed to the folk scene'.
Who are these powerful King Knuts who can turn back the tide? Hardly likely to happen just to please 2 people.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,Phil
Date: 21 Sep 14 - 06:58 PM

I'm not confused in the slightest, Steve. As a kid I was into "folk" meaning "whatever established folk artists feel like playing"; years later I discovered "folk" meaning "whatever enthusiastic amateurs feel like playing", and I thought it was a huge improvement. It was years after *that* that I discovered "folk" meaning "the ocean of songs that more or less fit the 1954 definition"; I've never been under any illusions about the (un)popularity of that version of "folk". I just think it's a really valuable body of work which - by and large - you don't encounter in settings which *don't* describe themselves using the F word. If you can't hear them in settings that *are* labelled 'folk', I think that's a really bad thing.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 21 Sep 14 - 08:52 PM

yes of course its valuable. Spenser's Faerie Queen is valuable. the novels of george meredith are valuable.

the question is whether functionally it is any more the folk music of England.

the clincher for me is always Sheath and Knife. i have seen tony rose and paul downes and countless others waste their talent trying to breathe life into this rubbish song.

we are a fucked up nation when it comes to sex. not as bad as we used to be in the 60's and 70's but still pretty bad. its about incest, we whispered back in 65.

having taught in a school where incest was part of the weekend fun for half the pupils. i can tell you that song is bollocks. it tells nothing of the emotional and cultural poverty of those homes.

lets hope the next generation don't settle for the bloody nonsense of traditional folk music. either folk music is living or its dead. human creativity being what it is, folk music will continue - but it will outrun middle class respectability - thank god!

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 02:36 AM

I suppose if we must bring the Fred Jordan really into it and compare, which is daft but let's humour Jim for a moment... There is a difference between reveriing provenance and attracting enough people to your club in order to run it and book acts that require enough money to live on.

Fred may have been slightly clever with his party piece, pregnant pauses whilst singing Grandfather's Clock, but from a musical aspect, it was the contents of his head rather than dulcet tones that made him interesting. And yes, I knew him well and have put him up for the night on more than one occasion. Folk clubs have been about entertainment since day 1 and those with a hobby level interest in cataloguing and exploring the interconnect between lyrics and regions have always had to share their hobby with the vast many who love the music regardless of where it comes from.

Never been any different. If anything, traditional songs are making an inadvertent comeback because of the "inclusive" singaround style that has taken over from the more concert style folk clubs. After all, three chord song books don't have to pay royalties for The Wild Chuffing Rover.

Mabel from the chippy mumbling Sheaf and Knife over her half moon glasses, pausing to turn the page, or Carthy singing a Noddy Holder song? I know which one would keep me sat there with an empty pint pot. As much as I encourage her.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 03:50 AM

"You and Phil are the only ones who are confused, Jim."
Steve,
For all of Muskett's anarchisticly antagonistic and extremely ignorant ramblings and Al's patronising insulting, I think I find your few contributions to this subject the most disturbing, as they come from someone whose work I respect.
There is no "widely accepted genre/style that uses the same word" - how can there be?
Apart from the brief period when the predatory music industry milked folk- song for what it could take from it, the influence of folk song has never really spread wider than the club scene - we never managed to actively involve enough people for there to be such an alternative definition.
What we have is a definition based on research, which was almost immediately recognised and never seriously challenged ('54), and a mish-mash of unsubstantiated claims by self interested clubs and singer-songwriters, that what they are putting on or composing constitute 'a new folk music'.
The latter, tiny minority that they are, have no consensus among themselves as to what constitutes 'the new folk music' - look at their output - rock, 1950s hits, Beatles songs, Dylan (even after he had turned his back on the folk scene - also having milked it dry) - anything that takes their fancy.
Add to this, statements by a club organisers that in order to get some idea of what kind of songs I will find at any folk club, I will have to research it beforehand.
Others have said that while they have some sympathy with what I say, they will settle for what is happening at the clubs today, albeit, with some regret.
We have singularly failed to engage the general public in what some of us believe to be an extremely important and still relevant aspect of our culture.
So much of what is 'generally believed' by them has to be based on their ignorance of the subject - unless things have changed radically, I don't recall it being on school curricula, and higher education seems to now abandoned it (with a few notable exceptions)      
Diminishing self-interest pressure groups in the form of Folk Clubs, combined with general ignorance, and above all, disinterest, do not change dictionary definitions, so the prevailing definition continues to be the one to rely on - for me anyway.
The other thing that disturbs be here is the failure to recognise the important role of the local club - the move towards turning club nights into somewhat exclusive concerts hosting guest with out-of-reach expensive instrument and equipment playing music that has far more to do with the pop scene than 'the folk' as I know them to be.
This seems to have turned the revival from the democratic, freedom-bringing movement that it once was when it gave us all an equal right to strut our stuff, to a poor relation of the established music industry - pop wannabes.
The strength of the local clubs was that we didn't have to up sticks and head for a festival when wanted to hear our music - it was on our doorsteps and we could comfortably fit it into our everyday lives, where it rightfully belongs and where it has been for centuries - that is why folk song was such a strong part of the culture of working people.
They were places where those of us involved in field-work cold introduce the singers we met - ask anybody who went to a night where Walter Pardon guested, or where The Stewart family, with their wealth of songs an stories, entertained us - ask anybody who saw Mikeen McCarthy or Mary Delaney at the Singers Club or at The Musical Traditions club, or further back, Sam Larner, Jeannie Robertson, Harry Cox, Charlie Wills, Willie Scott.....
If they turned up today, they's be sat in a row, given a pint and treated to the loud, unmusical mish-mash that passes for folk today - the way it should be done.
The clubs were the doorways that many of us stepped through to acquaint ourselves with and enjoy our heritage, and for some of us, to lift up the corners to find out what was underneath.
Local clubs in places like Birmingham, Manchester and in particular, London, opened up new areas of local repertoire, adding to an already rich store - festivals will never do this in a million years.
The festivals were an added bonus - a chance to show what you were doing in your area and learn what others were up to - never anything more than that.
I very much doubt if the folkie juggernaut can be stopped on its way to self-destruction - I hope some of our researchers aren't clinging on to tightly to go with it.
This is not a "cheap shot" - it's the impression I have gained from what you have said so far - correct me if I am wrong.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 04:04 AM

the question is whether functionally it is any more the folk music of England

No, it isn't. And it hasn't been replaced, either - there is no "folk music of England" any more. First there were pianolas, then there were wireless sets, then there was the telly, and by the mid-1960s basically nobody had to make their own music any more. And what people don't have to do, by and large they don't do - unless they're doing it as a hobby, like home brewing or making your own clothes. So "the folk process" ground to a halt. "What makes a new song a folk song?" Nothing. Ain't gonna happen.

Oh, and I've read the Faerie Queene - once. Traditional songs are a damn sight more valuable than that!

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 04:14 AM

Mabel from the chippy mumbling Sheaf and Knife over her half moon glasses, pausing to turn the page, or Carthy singing a Noddy Holder song?

I know which one of those two I'd prefer, too. How about an unaccompanied singer rooting you to the spot with a rendition of a song you've heard a hundred times before, vs sitting in an audience listening to a tediously predictable protest song about saving the whale?

The stuff about people reading the words, "three-chord songbooks" and the rest is interesting, though - in my experience that laid-back attitude to amateurism is much, much more common in anything-goes FCs than in the more traditional settings. Once saw somebody do Johnny Mathis's version of "When a child is born", complete with spoken interlude - all of which she openly read from a music stand. To be fair, the MC did comment on this; her reply was on the lines of "I haven't got time to learn songs!"

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Howard Jones
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 04:57 AM

Jim, I agree with almost everything you say. What I find puzzling is your refusal to acknowledge that 'folk' has acquired a broader meaning than traditional folk, and did so decades ago. Furthermore, the folk clubs have always been open to 'folk' in its broader sense, at least for the last several decades. You may deplore this casual and inaccurate use of a use of a word which for you has a specific technical meaning, but your apparent insistence that this is not so is frankly baffling.

What is more reasonable is to say that the folk club scene is moribund. The reasons for this have been debated at length. However there is more to the folk scene than clubs and festivals. There is a network of informal sessions, particularly for tunes but also for song, where in my experience the standard of performance is far higher than you now get in most singaround clubs. There is also a network of house concersts. It is here, rather than in clubs, where the younger generation are developing the skills which allow them to enter the club and festival scene as seasoned performers. Many of them are deeply interested in traditional music, or are writing new material based on folk forms.

The folk scene has changed. Folk clubs served their purpose, but they were in their own way an artificial format which didn't reflect the way the music had originally been performed. As the once-young generation which created the clubs grows old, younger generations are coming to the music and doing it their way. For example, this evening I shall be going to the launch of a new album by a 30-year old musician - it will be a house concert, not in a folk club. The music is alive and vibrant, it's just not happening in old-style folk clubs.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 05:18 AM

"'folk' has acquired a broader meaning than traditional folk,"
In my opinion, this is only in a club scene that no longer seems interested in folk song - both Muskets and Al's postings display an outright dislike of them and the people who sing them - I'm really not prepared to concede the scene to attitudes like that without a fight.
By accepting a new definition that yet to be articulated and seems to be at odds with itself within the present folk scene seems to be adding to a deliberately contrived confusion.
I've said numerous times that I believe the only way folk is going to move forward is by saying what we mean as loudly and as clearly as we can
It's worked here - it might still work in Britain.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 05:29 AM

The music is alive and vibrant, it's just not happening in old-style folk clubs."
yes it is, depends on the folk club, Howard you should visit some folk clubs in the north east, for example THE WILSONS CLUB. The answer is it is happening in both, house concerts and folk clubs.
Howard , what is Sam lees club, is it not a folk club run by young people.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 05:53 AM

What's a house concert? (Or is it a case of "if you have to ask..."?)

Otherwise I tend to agree; in practice I think traddies lost ownership of the word 'folk' some time ago, at least in performance contexts.

I've just looked at the Web pages for a couple of nearby Folk Clubs.

Chorlton Folk Club:
Every Thursday at about 9 (usually a bit later), Jozeph MCs and a mix of young singer-songwriters and life-hardened old timers play all kinds of music.

Sale Folk Club:
modern and traditional Folk Songs from England, Ireland, Scotland, Australia, America. Rhythm & Blues features as does Country and Western and many people perform their own excellent material. The mixture is very eclectic with the likes of Dylan, Guthrie, The Beatles, Fats Waller, Jez Lowe, Allan Taylor, Richard Thompson, Jake Thackray and many more being represented.

By contrast, the singarounds I actually go to - and which are mostly traditional in content - are the "Sunday Singaround" and "Songs and Tunes at the Beech"[1]; no mention of the F-word.

I still think it's worth talking about, though, just because of my experience - which I'll recapitulate here in two lines:

2008: At the age of 47 I discover folk songs[2] and a community of people who know them, and almost immediately feel that this is the music I want to listen to (and sing) for the rest of my life.

2003: I become a regular performer at the local folk club.

Five years. It was fun at the time, God knows, but how I resent those years now. (I wasn't exactly young to start with.)

[1]Recently relocated and currently trading as "Songs and Tunes with the Beech Band". Fortunately they're quite well behaved and will shut up and listen if you'd rather sing without the Beech Band.

[2]Obviously I knew there were such things - I had my Pentangle and Steeleye Span albums, I'd been to Lark Rise. But until I started going to that singaround I thought they were a bit of a curiosity, and in any case a very limited resource - after all, even Steeleye had ended up doing their own stuff. I had no idea just how many traditional songs it was possible to sing - and just how good they could sound. And I would never have learned that from a "very eclectic" mixture of "all kinds of music".

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 05:53 AM

You are wrong about me not liking that which I hold most dear, so the chances of you being right about anything else are fairly slim..

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 05:58 AM

On the contrary, Musket, Jim said that your comments here "display an outright dislike" of traditional songs & the people who sing them. And I'd tend to agree.

If that's not what you think, you should probably say what you do think once in a while.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 06:20 AM

I do. If my opinion doesn't suit your agenda, review the agenda, not the evidence.

I like to wear black underpants for that matter, but don't chuck my toys out of the pram if I'm the only bloke having a piss in the gents with a bit of black cotton poking through my jeans.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 06:44 AM

'In my opinion, this is only in a club scene that no longer seems interested in folk song'

Actually Jim, I'm pleased to be able to tell you that's not the case with the clubs in Suffolk. There is still a healthy interest in traditional song, although the clubs local to me do put on a mix of what both you and I would call folk ;)

The Milkmaid Folk Club in Bury St Eds also promote concerts at The Apex, a 500 seater theatre in town, and I'll be there tonight with 300 others to enjoy Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick. In a few weeks time, Irish band Lunasa are there, and that's almost sold out already.

On that evidence, there is still a healthy interest in traditional song and music in this area.

John

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,ST
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 06:58 AM

"i have spent the last fifty years passionately interested in folk music " (Big Al Whittle : Date: 21 Sep 14 - 06:49 AM)
"lets hope the next generation don't settle for the bloody nonsense of traditional folk music" (Big Al Whittle : Date: 21 Sep 14 - 08:52 PM)
Sounds a bit like David Cameron's passionate interest in Scottish independence. (No offence intended just interested in juxtaposing the two comments.)

"the clincher for me is always Sheath and Knife. i have seen tony rose and paul downes and countless others waste their talent trying to breathe life into this rubbish song." (Big Al Whittle :Date: 21 Sep 14 - 08:52 PM)
I wonder why such countless numbers of performers (and such good ones as Rose and Downes, thought it worth their while. Could you be missing something? Still, it all goes to show that what one enjoys is just a matter of taste. For me Tony Rose's "Sheath and Knife" is a brilliant song brilliantly performed – whereas, generally, I hate songs that try to be funny or listening to English singers singing with assumed mid-Atlantic accents. Again, no offence intended; it's just a matter of taste for performance/material not a reflection on the person of the actual performer. What should not be a matter of taste though is which songs should merit the title folk song – no matter how popular. Even "Mabel from the chippy mumbling Sheaf and Knife over her half moon glasses, pausing to turn the page" (Musket : Date: 22 Sep 14 - 02:36 AM) couldn't change what the song is, only how well it's being performed. On this point though I'd agree with (Phil Edwards : Date: 22 Sep 14 - 04:14 AM) "The stuff about people reading the words, "three-chord songbooks" and the rest is interesting, though - in my experience that laid-back attitude to amateurism is much, much more common in anything-goes FCs than in the more traditional settings." At the singarounds I go to people mainly sing traditional songs from memory. (I can only think of one singer, who suffered a stroke a couple of years ago, who has words written down) At the folk clubs there is always a smattering of people with music stands and apparently failing memories who need the words to get through their Tom Paxton song.

" "The music is alive and vibrant, it's just not happening in old-style folk clubs."
yes it is, depends on the folk club, Howard you should visit some folk clubs in the north east, for example THE WILSONS CLUB. The answer is it is happening in both, house concerts and folk clubs." (Good Soldier Schweik : Date: 22 Sep 14 - 05:29 AM)
I would agree, and could cite a few other examples of "traditional" clubs but, in my limited experience, I think the majority of traditional songs are now sung in singarounds (interestingly not usually advertised and rarely having the word "folk" associated with them when being discussed by those who go to them – Edit – see below). Folk clubs that feature mainly traditional material are in the minority (most seem to favour the "anything goes approach" which, in practice means a lot of 1960s/70s music with a few additional singer/songwriters) and there's a whole other dimension out there of "Acoustic clubs" (usually with P.A. provided!) and open mic. set-ups where you can hardly find a traditional offering at all.

(Howard Jones : Date: 22 Sep 14 - 04:57 AM) Absolutely to all your points. Just what I'd have said if I were more articulate.

(Edit; "By contrast, the singarounds I actually go to - and which are mostly traditional in content - are the "Sunday Singaround" and "Songs and Tunes at the Beech"[1]; no mention of the F-word." (Phil Edwards : Date: 22 Sep 14 - 05:53 AM – got there first!)

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 07:28 AM

i respect creative endeavour. as Gielgud said about Laurence Olivier - you respect the energy, but the basic concept seems inexpressibly vulgar.

that's a bit how i feel about trad musicians. i respect their skill, but not their concept of what constitutes folk music. i am on friendly terms with many of them.

all the shitty attitude seems to come from your camp.

is it the fact that i am thinking independently about the nature of folk music, or the fact that i am expressing my thoughts that pisses you off most?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,Spleen Cringe
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 07:47 AM

Once again it's a discussion of three different things.

1. FOLK. Traditional music, from any tradition, as defined by the whole 1954 shebang or something similar, which may or may not be dead and which you may or may not hear in some folk clubs. Subject to academic study and discussion. The style and content, or whether individual songs and tunes are actually any good, is irrelevant. What matters is the provenance. This can be played by gathering of amateurs, professional musicians or anyone else who fancies it and can range in style from unaccompanied singing to fuzzed out garage rock, so long as the songs are from the traditional repertoire.

2. FOLK. Anything labelled as such by the music industry, whether specialist or generalist. This is probably what the general public thinks is folk, if any of them actually have an opinion on the matter. All the professional performers (and many of those who aspire to be) are included in this category - if it's about paying at the door and bums on seats, it doesn't matter if its trad or folktronica or singer songwriting or protest songs, it's all industry folk because on some level it's a commercial enterprise, whether successful as such or not.

3. FOLK. Music of the people in the sense of amateur musicians of any age or ability or background coming together publically or privately to play any music in any genre on any instrument for the sheer pleasure of playing - without any commercial or industrial considerations. This can be traditional music, cover versions, new songs, opera arias or what ever else floats the boat of the participants - the essential thing is that it's homemade and no money changes hands. This may happen inside or outside of gatherings labelled folk clubs.

*****************************************************************

There's nothing wrong with any of these definitions. None of them are right or wrong - and on their own terms and all of them do exactly what is said on the tin. There's even areas of overlap between them, except, arguably, between No.2 and No.3 (though professional musicians turning up for a No.3 event, on the terms of No.3, would for that moment be playing No.3 folk, of course). They already co-exist and in true popping-the-genie-back-in-the-bottle mode, no-one is in a position to claim the term 'folk' as an exclusive definition to describe one and not the others. What anyone might want - or how things 'should' be - is irrelevant. This is what we have. And as far as I can see, it's fine, if we work on the basis that playing and listening to music is something people do for pleasure.

I'd also add that if I fancy going to see a film, for instance, I won't just turn up knowing nothing about it, I'll read a review first to see if it's the sort of thing I might enjoy. It's the same with a 'folk' night - we are not in a position to simply turn up and expect it's going to be the version of folk we might favour: we have to do a little research. Just as we would with many things in life.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 07:50 AM

I was at the match yesterday and we won 1.0.

I don't recall moaning that it would have been 3.0 in the days of Chris Waddle, David Hirst and John Sheridan though... I don't say that if it isn't 442, it isn't real football. (Although it would have made us less reliant on good defence if it had have been...)

On this, I seem to be in tune with Al. I can respect but would never put it on the same entertainment level as what I personally like, yet folk music can deliver both. It's just that where appreciation and sheer entertainment coincide for me, it rarely wears its trousers up to its tits and tries to impress gullible collectors about a childhood it never actually had.

When Tom Brown said on Radio 2 that he learned a song (I bloody wrote) on his mother's knee, I just saw it for what it was. Theatre. (Aye, he knew I hadn't registered it too..) Perhaps if those who worship MacColl actually listened to what he said, you'd see that.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: johncharles
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 08:17 AM

I have just wasted 12 minutes of my life listening to a couple of online versions of Sheathe and Knife. The ballad may be historically precious, but that in itself is not enough. It needs to be well sung. The biggest thing putting many people off folk clubs is not the songs but the manner of their delivery. No matter how good the song poor singing ( which strangely always gets a polite clap )is the killer for those other than hardened folkies inured to mediocre renditions.
john

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 08:45 AM

"I'd also add that if I fancy going to see a film, for instance, I won't just turn up knowing nothing about it, "
You's be pretty pissed off if you turned up to find they'd advertised a film - no matter what - only to find they'd edcided tp put on a Salvation Army concert.
Your definitions
1 Nobody is asking for anything adhering to '54 - one of those dishonest red herrings put up by the 'Mickey Mouse' crowd.
2 The music industry market what they sell to please the shareholders - they neither know nor care what they call what they as long as they can hang a price tag on it.
We set up the folk clubs to get away from the garbage they were putting out - you would have us crawl back and say "sorry for being so ambitious and disloyal"
3.   "cover versions, new songs, opera arias or what ever else floats the boat of the participants" - says it all for me and siums up what this is all about - the right to choose what you listen to.
None of them are generally accepted definitions - not even by th revival - but feel free to hoist them up the flag......
JohnC
I can remember MacColl's excitement at being given a text copy of 'Sheath and Knife' by Bob Thomson, and I can still remember the first time he sang it in public and the stunning effect it had on the audience - still brings a lump....
Apart from Ewan's recording, Gordeanna MacCulloch and Terry Yarnell both manage to bring a powerful, centuries-old ballads to life for me.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 08:56 AM

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Bounty Hound - PM
"Date: 22 Sep 14 - 06:44 AM

'In my opinion, this is only in a club scene that no longer seems interested in folk song'

Actually Jim, I'm pleased to be able to tell you that's not the case with the clubs in Suffolk. There is still a healthy interest in traditional song, although the clubs local to me do put on a mix of what both you and I would call folk ;)

The Milkmaid Folk Club in Bury St Eds also promote concerts at The Apex, a 500 seater theatre in town, and I'll be there tonight with 300 others to enjoy Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick. In a few weeks time, Irish band Lunasa are there, and that's almost sold out already.

On that evidence, there is still a healthy interest in traditional song and music in this area.

John"
i happen to be booked at this club, i sing folk songs, a fair amount of trad songs i do not sing fifties popsongs, i know jim carroll doesnt like my singing,i dont lose any sleep over that one.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 09:15 AM

I knew that Dick, and with a fine traditional singer booked as support for you, (my old friend Paddy Butcher)

I am (my own gigging commitments permitting)part of the crew at the Milkmaid, so I'll look forward to seeing you there.

Further evidence that the clubs in Suffolk are very much still interested in 'folk' song ;)

John

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 09:33 AM

John. When you think about it, there are many awful songs made good by a bloody good artiste. The proof of the pudding being hearing them sung in not so good a manner. A good song might survive the croak, but a bad song shows its true colours.

All points in between. There are some songs I would love to sing but found I am not good enough to sing them well enough make them entertaining for a discerning audience. Some because of the vocal range in the tune, some because try as I might, even a complicated guitar style with a good riff can't polish a turd. (Carthy has made a living out of this method. If a traditional song has a snazzy guitar intro, the song needs it. King John being an excellent example.)

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 10:06 AM

Howard jones, does paddy butcher sing trad folk songs? do i sing trad folk songs, you have seen us both perform?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 10:09 AM

Al, forgive me, but I'm just a little confused here.

You said earlier:

'your stuff is music that used to be folk music, before the folks got pissed off with it'

'that's a bit how i feel about trad musicians. i respect their skill, but not their concept of what constitutes folk music'

The 'music that used to be folk music' still is, you can argue the toss here as much as you like, but you can't change that! And if you look at my earlier posts, you'll see that there is still a healthy taste for that 'original' folk music, at least where I am. Now, as I said earlier, I'm very comfortable to call a new song folk music, as long as it shows respect for, and the influence of the tradition from which it is then claiming to have evolved from.

I've never seen you performing, but due the miracle of the modern folk process (youtube) I've had a look at some of your songs, and have seen some excellent guitar playing, and very well delivered songs, that I would be very comfortable to see in a folk club, or billed as folk elsewhere, but what I don't understand is given that we have to accept that the traditional music of any country is their 'folk' music, as that is a matter of historical fact, and given what from your postings appears to be a dislike of that tradition, why do YOU want to hang your music on the 'folk' peg?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: TheSnail
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 10:10 AM

Getting a bit left behind but herer goes -

Jim Carroll
I don't brush it aside - I respond to them as I believe them to be - well covered inaccuracies.
Jim, you demanded that i answer your rather meaningless question and I pointed out that I had already responded as best I could. You now refuse to accept my answer. Your problem.

"I have never experienced this and you have provided no evidence that it happens."
Yes I have - this argument with its "bob geldof songs are folk songs" and other such arguments are indications that this is what i will find at many folk clubs
I had missed the Geldof reference when it first came round. Here it is

=========================================================================================================
From: Musket - PM
Date: 28 Aug 14 - 03:51 AM

Thirty odd years ago, Dave Burland got up to sing in a folk club that rather pompously declared itself a "folk only" club. I had earlier sung one of my own songs and got a glare from the MC.

Dave sang "I don't like Mondays" written by Bob Geldof of course for his band The Boomtown Rats and recently been in the charts back then.

He introduced it as a living folk song. Gave the provenance in his intro, all the rest of it.

It's been my interpretation ever since.

Any chance of giving it a Bridge number?
=========================================================================================================

Musket: Thirty odd years ago
Jim: this is what i will find at many folk clubs
Is there really no straw so tiny that you won't clutch at it?

silence and support for such statements show the position is accepted
Nobody spoke in support of this. The silence is more likely to be lack of interest. Can I take it that if you are silent on anything I say I can take that as support?

as do ads for hip-hop, 1950s pop jazz..... as part of 'folk evenings.
Show me. Where can I find these ads? Where are these clubs? Evidence doesn't just mean something Musket or Big Al said on this thread it means stuff that is going on out here in the real world. (You seem to have dropped heavy metal from your hate list.)

For the umpteenth time, you've been given examples of some, just thrown in a few more, with another reason why they are what they are.
A while ago you said "I need a fairly solid definition for whet we choose to do". Why can't you tell me what that fairly solid definition is? Examples are no use whatsoever to anyone else. What you are basically saying is "What I expect to see in a folk club is what I, Jim Carroll, expect to see in a folk club."

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 10:13 AM

You'd be pretty pissed off if you turned up to find they'd advertised a film - no matter what - only to find they'd decided to put on a Salvation Army concert.

The equivalent of this would be to turn up at a folk club to find it was a cookery demonstration. I don't think there's anywhere in my post where I'm suggesting cookery demonstrations are folk nights!

1 Nobody is asking for anything adhering to '54 - one of those dishonest red herrings put up by the 'Mickey Mouse' crowd.

I think it's fairly obvious that I'm using the 1954 definition as a shorthand for traditional music and that new music subjectively deemed by those who like traditional music to be a suitable bedfellow for it. I don't have a problems with traditional music as a concept and I understand what it is (Subjectivity alert: IMHO good traditional song well sung are one of the joys of life. But so is heavy psychedelia, so what do I know?), but I think that amongst the permitted faux-traditional songsmithery, there's an awful lot of maudlin codswallop and cringe-making fakery. I also think that when you have a traditional-music night, there is as little chance of quality control as there is at an anything-goes night, unless you are of the opinion that all traditional music is worth hearing regardless if it's any good or not. Here I'm obviously talking about English language traditional music and faux-folk, given that you rarely see a griot lugging his kora into your average folk club...

2 The music industry market what they sell to please the shareholders - they neither know nor care what they call what they as long as they can hang a price tag on it.

Which is effectively in complete accord with what I wrote, except you see it as a negative and I see it as a simple fact of life not worth getting stoked up about. Especially as the 'music industry' includes tiny not-for-profit record labels, amateur promoters and semi-professional musicians who aren't primarily in it for the money - as well as the big businesses who might as well be selling knitwear. As a definition and an actual reality, this sort of folk music is out there and kicking, whether any of us like it or not. And so it will remain until the last professional musician is hung from the guts of the last record company executive. Or on a more local scale scale, until the last semi-professional folk singer is hung from the guts of the last folk club organiser (DISCLAIMER: I am NOT advocating this. Yet).

We set up the folk clubs to get away from the garbage they were putting out - you would have us crawl back and say "sorry for being so ambitious and disloyal"

You may have set them up, but as you must know, a lot of people liked the idea, took it up and ran with it, sometimes in directions you couldn't have foreseen and wouldn't have wanted. But that's the nature of a good idea: unless you are able to keep a cast iron grip over it, it changes and morphs beyond recognition as it passes through many hands and minds. You don't have to like it and you certainly don't have to go crawling to anyone (not that I believe you would!), but it's real.

3.   "cover versions, new songs, opera arias or what ever else floats the boat of the participants" - says it all for me and sums up what this is all about - the right to choose what you listen to.

Or play or sing. And that's it exactly. Some folk clubs are largely traditional (I have one two minutes walk from my house and I really should get there more often). Some are about broad-based homemade music making that may include the odd traditional song (that one's nearly ten minutes walk away and I should get there more often, too). Both have 'folk' on the label and although they are poles apart in approach, both are about folk music in one sense or another. You choose your poison... and that's why I can't see what all the fuss is about. No edicts have been issued.

None of them are generally accepted definitions - not even by the revival - but feel free to hoist them up the flag......

True. But I reckon they do add up to a fairly accurate bit of amateur reportage. Even if it's a bit back-of-the-envelope, it's recognisable and real. And - hooray! - there's clearly demarked space within it for Jim and Al and all points in between. That's worth celebrating.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,Spleen Cringe
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 10:14 AM

Me above.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 10:15 AM

Paddy Butcher still around, John? Well I never -- must be 45 years since I used to have him to sing at the Sawston Folk Club I ran way back then. Give him all best regards if he remembers me whatever.

≈≈Michael≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: TheSnail
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 10:45 AM

I made note of the origins of the songs that our guests sang at the Lewes Saturday Folk Club on Saturday night -

Peter Bellamy
Ewan Maccoll
Trad
Trad
Ewan Maccoll
Al Stewart
Kipling/Bellamy
Jim Mageean/Johnny Collins
Trad
Richard Thompson
Trad
Trad
Trad
Ewan Maccoll
Bob Copper/Bellamy
James Grafton Rogers

I think it may be the first time ever that I have heard anybody sing The First Time Ever in a folk club.

Here they are singing the Jim Mageean/Johnny Collins song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqWM39RVvrM.

Not at the club but here is a selection from one of the sessions at last year's Lewes Folk Festival. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0T6exQw-Xyg. The two women dancing at the beginning are settled travelers. If you watch carefully, you may see two guitarists near the end.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 10:53 AM

Jim,
There are clearly many areas of the UK that have a thriving folk scene at folk club, concert, festival, session levels so on this you are simply wrong. Just to throw one area into the pot which I visit fairly frequently, Sheffield has a wonderful range of folk activities, and from what I've seen there is much there that would float your boat. Several source singers and their families live in close proximity. You can listen to some of them on the Yorkshire Garland website. There is also a thriving academic folk scene there.

You are fully aware I'm sure of Whitby Folk Festival and the hundreds of events they put on in a week most of which are based around traditional music. There are other smaller similar festivals in the area.

Jim,
You are simply missing the point, deliberately I think, as at least half a dozen posters have repeated my initial point that there ARE other usages of the word folk. (I'm not going to call them definitions). Let's use the word 'understanding'. I can guarantee you that many more people in this country and in the rest of the English-speaking world (except apparently Ireland) would understand the wider usages of the word 'folk' when applied to song, than any of the 'definitions' you are putting forward.

Jim, your stubbornness is valiant but pointless.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 11:00 AM

" I don't think there's anywhere in my post where I'm suggesting cookery demonstrations are folk nights!"
But you are suggesting "opera arias or what ever else floats the boat " are.
"I think it's fairly obvious that I'm using the 1954 definition as a shorthand for traditional music "
And I have made clear throughout that I am not suggesting in any way that definition of tradition has nothing to do with my argument "opera arias or what ever else floats the boat" again.
"and I see it as a simple fact of life not worth getting stoked up about."
And I see it as selling out to the pap the revival was set up to escape from.
The idea was to introduce traditional music and encourage the creation of new songs using what we learned from them - not create a backdoor into the big-time
It's only inevitable if we are prepared to sell out to the money-men and wannabes
"Amature reporting" of what - no consensus certainly
Must catch the post
Jim Caroll