What makes a new song a folk song?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 29 Aug 14 - 01:15 PM

" I'm also aware that millions more people than my few acquaintances and fellow researchers have a different concept of what 'folk' is"
Millions?
Give us a break Steve - would there were anywhere as near as many involved.
If there are so many - why has nobody ever come up with a workable definition - let alone a consensus?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 29 Aug 14 - 01:16 PM

Howard Jones and a few others have already pretty much nailed this one, but the Peter Bellamy question posed above made me wonder why PB was considered a 'folk singer' at all:

Because many of the songs he sang had a certain provenance?

Because he sang them in a particular style, and accompanied them with a concertina?

Because he performed on the folk club circuit?

Then you have to consider whether, if PB and (say) John Denver were both 'folk singers', the term has any useful meaning - even when restricting it to the folk revival of the late 20th century. The trouble with adopting musicological criteria for a definition is that we can't even find common ground between the British Isles and the USA (where our 'traditional folk music' is usually described as 'Celtic'), never mind the rest of the world.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 29 Aug 14 - 01:22 PM

"as one who thinks there can be no such thing as new or recent 'folk' song"!
Never said any such thing

From: Jim Carroll - PM
Date: 28 Aug 14 -
09:22 AM

"I write songs in traditional folk style. Does that make them "folk"
You can't write folk songs any more than you can write hit songs - it's not your decision to make.
Jim Carroll

Sorry Jim, must have misunderstood the words 'you can't write a folk song'!

And of course the UK has a living tradition, and I'm pleased to inform you that it always will have whilst people are still writing songs and tunes influenced by, and paying respect to that tradition.

Presumably, if we follow your thoughts, there must be a time when that 'living tradition' ceased, and therefore any song written after that time is not a 'folk' song, perhaps you can tell us when that happened!

I'm quite sure you understood the point I was making using Bellamy as an example, but chose not to answer, I'm certain there would be universal acceptance of Bellamy as a 'folk singer', one of the songs I quoted in my earlier post fits your 'definition', so do tell us, how would you 'define' the possibly more recent song, author unknown, and the song written by the man himself?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 29 Aug 14 - 01:32 PM

"And of course the UK has a living tradition, "
Where?
"You can't write folk songs any more than you can write hit songs "
You can't "write a folk song - you can write a song that eventually becomes a folk song
Folk songs become such via a process
"there must be a time when that 'living tradition' ceased, and therefore any song written after that time is not a 'folk' song"
Why?
Still don't get your point about Bellamy - he sang folk songs - he didn't make them
Please point out where I have misunderstood you if I am - certainly not trying to avoid answering you.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Don Firth
Date: 29 Aug 14 - 02:06 PM

TIME, Bounty Hound. Time and usage.

If no one but the person who wrote the song ever sings it, then it's NOT a folk song. But if a pop song (not a folk song to begin with) gets picked up and sung by a whole bunch of people (NOT professional singers), then it's on its way to becoming what scholars and folklorists call a "folk song."

I don't see what is so difficult to understand about this.

Actually, I DO know what the problem is. The songwriter who wants his or her stuff accepted as a folk song—thus gaining a status that it has not yet earned!!—calls it a "folk song" the first time it's ever sung by anyone (himself or herself).

Phony, phony, phony!!!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Ernest
Date: 29 Aug 14 - 02:17 PM

Musket,
I am afraid I don`t understand your post of 28. Aug 14, 3:12 PM. What is it that you tried to put a value to and how?
In what aspect can a discussion about music by people interested in it but not well known to the public like ourselves can hurt a music?

What have the John-Barleycorn-singing BNP-members to do with beards, sandals and brown rice? Complaining about expensive instruments seems to indicate that in your opinion real folks have to be poor in your view - which looks like a leftis view to me.

And how can someone totally unknown like me "disenfranchise a hell of a lot of bloody good folk music with my pompous pronouncements"?
I can`t prevent anyone to call his music whatever he/she likes to - they are just as entitled to their opinion as I am to mine. That`s what we all have to live with.

I am afraid that your posting might be at least as pompous as mine (looks like we have been successful in driving the OP off ;0)

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 29 Aug 14 - 02:32 PM

The point about Bellamy is simple Jim, he not only performed traditional songs, but also songs he had written himself, performed in exactly the same style, and to the uneducated ear it would have been difficult to tell the difference. So if that new song is not a 'folk' song, what is it?

At what point does that new song cease to be what ever it is and become a folk song. It's still the same song.

I've had the pleasure of hearing songs I've written sung by other people, and the even bigger pleasure of packed marquees at folk festivals singing along when I've performed those songs, does that make them 'folk' and if not, what are they?

If I'm following what I think you're saying correctly then whatever is the current number one could become a folk song if people are still singing it in, say, 100 years time, or a piece of classical music written 300 years ago and still being performed regularly is now folk.

Surely 'folk' is about a style that maintains a tradition and not about age?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 29 Aug 14 - 03:06 PM

" but also songs he had written himself"
Been there done that - the ones he wrote weren't folk songs and he would have been the last person to have claimed they were.
A nerw song is a new song - it graduates to belg a folk song through a process of natural selection (only we refer to it as the folk process)
"It's still the same song"
It has undergone the process of selection , which by and large, no longer exists - the music industry helped to put paid to that.
"...does that make them 'folk' and if not, what are they?"
You tell me - what makes them folk?
" the current number one could become a folk song if people are still singing it in, say, 100 years time"
Nope - it would still belong to the feller who wrote it and almost certainly copyrighted it - he's have made sure of that.
Is God Save the Queen a folk song - it was written a long time ago?
Is Ode to Joy a folk song - even older?
"folk' is about a style that maintains a tradition and not about age?"
Nothing to do with style otherwise all folk songs would have been made in the same style - they most certainly are not
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,CJ
Date: 29 Aug 14 - 03:08 PM

"
If no one but the person who wrote the song ever sings it, then it's NOT a folk song. But if a pop song (not a folk song to begin with) gets picked up and sung by a whole bunch of people (NOT professional singers), then it's on its way to becoming what scholars and folklorists call a "folk song." "

Makes sense to me.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MikeL2
Date: 29 Aug 14 - 03:25 PM

Hi

Oh dear he we go again trying to define the (almost) undefinable.

For most of my life I have been a musician, not always in the professional sense.

I have played in bands and groups and solo playing all kinds of music.

I played in "folk" clubs and sang " folk" songs but in no way did I consider myself as a folk singer.

One thing I have observed in this journey is that in the folk world their is a great division between traditional folk music and "other" folk music. In my view there is a sort of snob value that tries to separate and divide. This is not only with the musicians but with the audiences too.

I played a lot of jazz. Like many ( if not most ) jazz musicians I regularly crossed over from the Modern Jazz that I loved, to Traditional Jazz that I also enjoyed, and back.
In my experience there was no wide gulf in feeling between the various musicians in fact the opposite.
We used to play together and share knowledge and skills in a way that I never knew with "folk".

To get back on the thread I agree with Musket and believe that a very small percentage of folk musicians neither know about the 1954 "agreement" and much less care about it.

Play the music....whatever it is..

Cheers

MikeL2

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 29 Aug 14 - 03:28 PM

And of course the UK has a living tradition, and I'm pleased to inform you that it always will have whilst people are still writing songs and tunes influenced by, and paying respect to that tradition.

Er - no, nay, never...

*

Peter Bellamy used the term 'Tradition Idiom' with respect of the tunes he composed to go with the Rudyard Kipling poems. Despite his 'thesis', these worked much better (IMHO!) than the actual Traditional ones he used. In this he proved himself a latter day master of a revival founded on something undoubtably old, but essentially repro in essence, as examplified by his songwriting on The Transports etc, brilliant though it was.

It pays, I think, to know and respect the difference - as Bellamy undoubtably did.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 29 Aug 14 - 04:37 PM

Jim, I call them modern folk songs, or perhaps to use the quote above, in the 'traditional idiom', and I believe that to be a fair description, and would like to think that they are my small contribution to maintaining a tradition.

I'm still interested to know how you define the type of song we're discussing though, you've not answered that one yet :)

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Aug 14 - 05:39 PM

Hm, perhaps I'm confusing folk music and folk song in Northumberland. But people like Kathryn Tickell, Paulene Cato and the rest are nnot only playing the old repertoire but adding to it, and adding words too.

Essex, for that matter, still maintains its local song tradition. One could also add in the Sheffield Carols, indeed all the activity listed on LocalCarols.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 03:22 AM

The snag is Ernest, it's hard not to sound pompous when faced with something ludicrous.

The Imagined Village first album has sold over a million copies and try telling those who purchased it that they have to alter the genre of five of the tracks because they are not traditional. (I include the excellent Tam Lin revisited in that.)

Tell you what Jim, I'll take you to your word re folk process. Here in c21, the process has given us contemporary folk. Better still, I can exchange my royalties for beer. Even better, whether you publish without permission in Ireland or UK, you can find yourself with an invoice. Although in reality, I encourage my songs to be sung and the score available. Nothing gives me greater pleasure than finding them on lyrics databases from google searches. (Ok, one of my songs has been credited as traditional on one search engine which is pleasing and frustrating in turn.)

It's all folk though.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 03:45 AM

"Play the music....whatever it is.."
Can't disagree with this in any way, if that's all you wish to do, if you wan't to take it further it becomes more complicated.
If it hadn't been for those who wanted to take it further - the often non-performer researchers, collectors and enthusiasts , et al who made the songs available to us in the first place and have continued to do so, we wouldn't have the songs we have at our fingertips nowadays and we certainly wouldn't be aware of each others existence in order to exchange ideas on forums like this one.   
I've set out my own stall for what my involvement is - not everyone's bag, but whenever I get the opportunity I'm happy to become involved in sharing ideas and experiences.
It certainly has kept me from being bored and given me massses of pleasure over the last half century and has made me a lot of friends along the way.
"trying to define the (almost) undefinable"
It's only undefinable if you ignore the definitions as they exist and try to make sense of them - works as a rule-of-thumb for many of us, though they are in need of refining.
The point always ignored is that many of the older singers who gave us these songs had their own definitions for the songs we call folk songs.
Walter Pardon, probably one of the most important English singers in the latter half of the 20th century, called them folk songs, a term he possibly picked up from the use made of Sharp's 'Folk Songs for Schools' when he was a child.
He probably associated the songs he was taught then with his family's large repertoire of songs and spotted the link.
When he carefully wrote down all his family's songs he could put together in an exercise book in the 1940s, they stood on their own - virtually all folk songs.
He filled several tapes talking about the differences between them and his large repertoire of music hall songs and Victorian Parlour ballads, which he had in abundance and also sang, when requested to do so, though, to my recollection, he never did so at a folk club.
He told us of the time when relatives of his own age abandoned the family repertoire and took up "the new stuff" - a clean break with "the old folk songs".
Blind Travelling woman, Mary Delaney had a repertoire of somewhere between 150 and 200 folk songs (we never managed to quite finish recording her), which she referred to as "my daddies songs' - when we recorded him, he managed to remember around half-a-dozen, she was referring to the TYPE of songs her father sang.
She could have doubled her recorded repertoire with the Country and Western songs she knew, but refused point-blank to sing them because "they aren't the songs we're talking about".
She said she only sang C&W because, "They're the type of songs the lads ask for when we're all in the pub".         
Among the rural Irish singers, they call them "traditional, sean-nós, old, come-all-yes", a few call them folk.
Virtually all identified them as "Norfolk" or "Taveller" or "Clare"...., wherever they might have originated - they claimed them as their own.
Many of them expressed strong opinions of how they should be sung, we are now recording a ninety-odd year old singer who actually stopped singer his magnificent repertoire because of what "the young crowd are doing with the songs".
It seems that the 'anything goes - near enough for folk song' approach is a 'folkie' rather than a 'folk' point-of-view.
Maybe that's a clue to a new name for what happens in many folk clubs nowadays, 'folkie songs' - certain would help me decide what tin to open.
"Peter Bellamy used the term 'Tradition Idiom'"
That's not a bad term to use to discriminate between the imitations and the real thing - I agree entirely that Peter was one singer who was well aware of the difference.
"maintaining a tradition"
Maintaining a tradition is fine, using traditional forms to create new songs is a wonderful way of doing that, but for me, if we are going to make use of all the other information that our contact with folk songs has brought with it, it is essential to establish the difference, hence these endless discussions.
I cant begin to describe the amount of new knowledge I have gained over the last year by having to annotate the songs we have collected in County Clare in the last forty years - it's thrown open a load of doors into this area's social and political history since The Famine - 'The Half Crown', 'The Cattle Drive protests', ' The West Clare Railway', 'the sinking of The Leon', 'The Quilty Burning', 'The Fanore School incident', 'The Buckingham Palace Meeting'.... dozes more historical and social events that would have been buried in time if they hadn't been immortalised in songs.
As I say, maybe not your bag, but enough to put enough petrol in my tank for a few years to come.
I suspect that I'm not alone in this.   
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 04:23 AM

You see, the snag is Jim, I'm not saying you are wrong.

I'm not saying I am either.

It's perspective and relative. Neither you nor I can pronounce otherwise.

And we can both start an argument in an empty room.....

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 05:00 AM

"It's perspective and relative. Neither you nor I can pronounce otherwise. "
It really isn't about "pronouncing" anything Muskie.
We all have our individual interests in these things and work to them.
If we are going to discuss them, involve other people in them, write or talk about them, attempt to pass them on.... we have to reach a consensus on what we mean.
Like it or not, there is an established definition - actually summed up in 1954, but arrived at at least half a century before that.
It is tied in with other disciplines, Folk dance, music, lore customs, tales, art.... all related by origin.
If you are not happy with the existing definition - fine - change it, but in order for it to serve any purpose, you have to reach some form of consensus on those changes.
If you don't need a definition for what you do, fine also, but don't knock those of us who do.
I find it more than a little ironic and often get rather pissed off with sneery and often vicious arguments which rant about "folk police" and trying to "impose our views on others" by people who are doing exactly what they are accusing us of.
If you have a definition of your own - great - tell us what it is.
I've shown you mine - you show me yours!
It seems totally bizarre to me that a subject as fundamental as this has become a no-go area on a forum that purports to be dedicated to folk song and music.
I cannot think of another single artistic or cultural endevour where this is the case.
'The Folk Police Rule - O.K'.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 05:25 AM

There is an established published definition from 2014. Musket published it on Mudcat...

But don't worry, he isn't precious about it.

The point is, folk as a term is not defined by any 1954, 2014 or any other convention. it is what it is marketed as. It is what people see it as.

Musically, the two unfortunate descriptor terms "traditional" and "contemporary" have been bandied around for so many years, they have provenance of their own. It is impossible to say "folk" and just mean one of them.

McColl wrote folk songs. I have no issue with that. Neither do millions of others. (Once whilst interviewing Fred Jordan, I quizzed him over a song he "collected." he said the final few verses were his own work, as the words to what he learned weren't any good....)

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 05:28 AM

"Peter Bellamy used the term 'Tradition Idiom'"
That's not a bad term to use to discriminate between the imitations and the real thing - I agree entirely that Peter was one singer who was well aware of the difference.
"maintaining a tradition"
Maintaining a tradition is fine, using traditional forms to create new songs is a wonderful way of doing that

Hi Jim, me again ;) Can I just say I'm enjoying this debate and thank you for indulging me!

So we seem to be in agreement that new songs that are influenced by, or show respect to the tradition is fine, but I still want to know what we call them?

These new songs (and/or tunes) written using traditional forms are certainly not pop, rock, rap, jazz etc etc if we can't call them 'folk' then what do we call them?

John

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 05:39 AM

Call them folk. Millions of others do and nobody has been struck by lightning for doing so yet.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 05:51 AM

Thanks Musket, that's exactly what I do, but having got the acknowledgement from Jim that it's ok to write songs using traditional forms, I'm looking forward to seeing what he calls them :)

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 06:12 AM

"but having got the acknowledgement from Jim that it's ok to write songs using traditional forms"
Never been the slightest question of this and it would not be my place to suggest otherwise.
My mentor and late friend, Ewan MacColl, probably wrote more new songs using traditional forms than most of us have had hot dinners - he chose not to call them folk songs.
"but I still want to know what we call them?"
Why bother - they're your songs and hopefully, perfectly acceptable in most folk clubs (providing they fir in with club policy).
"But don't worry, he isn't precious about it."
But does he have a consensus, or even support for it - that's what this is about - communication, being able to understand what each of us are on about
You can call them what you want - in my opinion, dogmatic attitudes like that have not only made the subject a no-go area, but have buggered up the folk scene for many thousands of us who opted out when we found we were not being given what was advertised when we paid our hard-won pennies at the door.
You want to argue with Ewan by claiming he wrote folk songs and spent a lifetime arguing that they weren't - bit late I'm afraid - but feel free to dig out the old Ouija board when the fancy takes you.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,Derrick
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 06:14 AM

It's a good job we don't have the folk equivalent of ISIS,or there would a massacre.
Everybody knows what folk means to them,it's everyone else who is wrong.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 06:41 AM

'You can call them what you want - in my opinion, dogmatic attitudes like that have not only made the subject a no-go area'

Not being dogmatic Jim, although perhaps you are, you give a name to what fits your criteia for 'folk' so come on, indulge me, give a name to the new songs that I would call folk.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 06:53 AM

"you give a name to what fits your criteia for 'folk' so come on, indulge me, give a name to the new songs that I would call folk."
I'm not being dogmatic in pointing out that a definition exists - it does and you have access to it.
Nor have I given a name that fits my criteria - somebody else did a long time before I was a twinkle in anybody's eye (or a pain in anybody's arse).
As for a name for your songs, Jack Blandiver, (above) gave an excellent one, songs written in the folk idiom, assuming they are, of course.
It really isn't my job to pick an identification tag for someone else's creations.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 07:04 AM

Ha, so are we getting somewhere? it's ok to use the 'F' word to describe a new song as long as they are of a style that fits the tradition, and as long as you're not trying pass it off as traditional.

Am I understanding you correctly there Jim?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 07:23 AM

You really are making a bit of a meal of this
You have a definition of what folk song is - happy to provide a huge reading list and discography and if it's any help.
Beyond that - nuffin' to do wiv me guv - oyur choice entirely
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,SteveT
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 07:36 AM

Thanks for an interesting thread. The general principle that words may mean different things to different groups of people is not uncommon. As an ex-biologist I could give you many examples where the "true" scientific definition of a scientific term is quite different to the way it is used by the general public. Surely that's what's happening here. If you work in a specialised field you need precision in your terminology; the layman doesn't need this precision. I wouldn't classify the record industry (or whatever it is now there are no records) as "specialist" in terms of folk (or even music). They're there to make money and if a term like "folk" will make them money, they'll co-opt it. I would suggest that this is where the terminology problem originated. Before companies started to use the label to sell a product the "specialist academics" who had invented the term (largely in the wake of the development of "folklore" studies") had a clear understanding of the term they'd invented, based probably around the understanding of the "folk" from whom they collected. (See Jim Carroll 30 Aug 14 - 03:45 AM) So, really, before any discussion on this topic it might be wise to decide if it's to be a specialist or layman discussion.

One interesting point that comes out of the discussion seems to be one that's been raised in the past. If you take the "academic" approach to what makes a folk song (which is closer to my own viewpoint) then the process of documenting is one thing that tends to freeze the "folk process". I do believe, however, that the process is continuing – for example I learn plenty of songs "by ear". I don't read music so the tune comes out perhaps a little different and I won't sing it until I've learned it "by heart" so the words will come out slightly different. I have the privilege of going to several singarounds where this is true of most of the singers. Originally I learned songs by hearing them over and over again: now the "process" is being stalled because it's too easy to look up a written version of the words (on Mudcat?!) and go to You-tube to listen to the tune. This reduces the amount of variation so the evolution of the song is interrupted. So the folk process is, I believe, slowing but not yet dead. Is this slow but continuing evolution of songs happening in a cultural context (akin to the "traveller" communities)? Not quite the same but to some extent the "folk world" has developed its own community. (I seem to be arguing that, in the modern world, the nature of "community" has changed?)

To address a couple of specific points:

"These new songs (and/or tunes) written using traditional forms are certainly not pop, rock, rap, jazz etc etc if we can't call them 'folk' then what do we call them?"
For most of the songs concerned, why not "Pop songs"? They are recently written presumably with the aim of becoming popular. They bear more similarity to the very wide genre called pop than they do to the previously narrowly-defined group called folk. (Or "folkish" see P.S.)
"I quizzed him over a song he "collected." he (Fred Jordan) said the final few verses were his own work, as the words to what he learned weren't any good...." – surely a perfect example of the folk process; how else do folk songs evolve?

(P.S. I've "written" (I use the term loosely) some songs which I sing at singarounds. I'd love them to become folk songs one day but they're definitely not folk songs now. I've got them on Soundcloud – I called them "folkish". A couple have even been taken up by others, which is pleasing, but what I really want is to hear someone who doesn't know me, and has learned it by ear, sing one in their own way – or someone hear me sing one and tell me I'm singing it wrong and that they know the correct "traditional" version. If that ever happens perhaps they'll be on their way to becoming a song folk one day.)

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 09:16 AM

Thanks for your "more light than heat input Steve" much needed.
I take your points completely, but would just like to clarify one of them.
"is quite different to the way it is used by the general public"
The term is, I believe not really used by the general public in any way other than in very general generalised references - you could empty a bar in five minutes flat with one of these discussions.
Folk is a term that has been latched onto by a small number of people to hang their own particular hat - I don't believe it does any genre of song to be lumped in indiscriminately with another if you want it to be taken seriously.
Over the last twenty years Irish traditional (folk) music has come into its own and has shifted from being referred to contemptuously on the media as "diddley-di music" to now being accepted as a fully fledged and serious art-form, with all the benefits that has brought.
Up to the present recession, to ask for a research grant for publishing or producing a C.D. or collecting or setting up a heritage centre or, as we did, bringing together the results of thirty years field work, was pushing on an open door.
We have two of the finest traditional music archives in Europe, if not the world (look up the Traditional Irish Music Archive).
Many thousands of youngsters are taking up the music and playing it in traditional styles or experimenting with it - room for all.
This has fed into the tourist industry, bringing thousands to Ireland to listen to, play and learn about (unadulterated) Traditional music each year.
This really hasn't been achieved by faffing around with definitions to please some of the people all of the time, but by someone saying "this is what we are and this is what we are about".
Song has some way to go yet to make up lost ground, but it seems to be getting there slowly.
Our collection has been taken up by our County Library and is due to go on line in the nest couple of months to cater for all tastes, singers, listeners, researchers, cultural and oral historians.... whoever.
We passed on a copy of our work to an authoritative singer friend in the North recently - his comment - "every County should have one".
With a bit of luck......
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 09:45 AM

Just to pick up on a point from Guest Steve T, What I've been talking about here is songs and tunes written influenced by, and paying respect to the tradition, so I'm not sure that 'pop' is the right term for them, perhaps pop might be the description for some things produced by navel gazing singer songwriters that have little substance, but are often passed off as 'folk'

And Jim, I'm not the one making a meal of this, just been asking a simple question, which thus far, you've declined to answer simply.

We have trad jazz, modern jazz, dixieland jazz etc all grouped under a collective term of 'Jazz' we have heavy rock, soft rock, metal etc all grouped under a collective term of 'Rock', we have orchestral pieces, piano concerto's, opera etc, all grouped under the collective term 'classical' and I'm fairly certain those are terms you would use too Jim. So I fail to understand why in your opinion, we can't have the same in 'folk'

I'll ask the question one last time, and of course we are talking here about songs (or tunes) written in the 'traditional idiom' or 'imitating' or 'influenced by the tradition' (Songs that maintain that tradition and keep it alive)

What do YOU call those type of songs Jim?

I'm not really expecting a simple, direct answer, as I suspect from your previous posts that you're struggling to find one without using the 'F' word

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 09:57 AM

I write folk songs.

PRS never had a problem with that.

Neither do I.

Some on this thread, not just Jim, would blank out the millions of contemporary folk songs out there purely on principle. If you like such songs, you go on Amazon or iTunes store and search on "contemporary folk." If you just put "folk" they assume you mean country and western and offer you a Dolly Parton album as first choice...

You see, you need to know what to call something in order to get your hands on it, and the world calls it contemporary folk.... Most British traditional folk gets called celtic by these American websites. Is Martin Simpson celtic through his Scunthorpe origins or Sheffield home??????

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 11:43 AM

" you've declined to answer simply."
If you say I haven't answered them, that is not true - I've dealt with every single point you've made to the best of my ability.
If you mean I haven't provided a simple answer - as far as I'm concerned, there isn't one.
Folk song is a far too complicated subject for yes and no answers.
Perhaps you mean I haven't given you the answers you wanted - sorry, can't help you there.
"What do YOU call those type of songs Jim?"
I've already pointed out what Jack Blandiver wrote about Peter Bellamy's description of them.
I don't need to give them a title; as much as I enjoy some of them and sing a few of them, they are "new songs written in the folk idiom".
That'll do nicely, thank you very much.   
"PRS"
Just hit on a sore spot with me Muskie; the PRS jackals are the last people I would go to for a definition - they neither know nor care which cow they milk.
One of the great experiences in all the time I spent in folk song was the realisation of the freedom and democracy that involvement in folk song brought.
I could stand up and exhibit my limited talents in the venues then available I didn't have to worry about the envelope dropping on the doormat demanding payment for that privilege.
When I met MacColl and Seeger, I was given carte blanche to do whatever I chose with the songs they were churning out and were researching for their own use - wheeeee!
Their publishers may have copyrighted their own songs on their behalf but I never remember their ever objecting to anybody singing or using their songs, with or without their permission - I still get a bit of a buzz to think I was singing 'First Time Ever' ten years before Elvis or Roberta Flack.   
I find it more and more disturbing to read queries about obtaining permission to record and perform "folk songs".
Don't know whether it's the same in the U.K. nowadays, but publicans who play music in their bars now have to watch the door in case the man from I.M.RO. (Irish equivalent of P.R.S.) drops in demanding his pound of flesh - different days, different ways.
You and P.R.S. may be happy to call it Contemporary Folk - then again, some people don't give a toss about the letter 'D' disappearing from the the English language (up to recently I believed 'Brawband' to be a musical criticism in Scotland)         
Takes all sorts!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Howard Jones
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 11:53 AM

It shouldn't be forgotten that the original meaning of 'folk music' was what we now call traditional music. The meaning has expanded to take in much more. That's fine - we can't stop language changing and common usage is what defines how words are used, not dictionaries.

I think the change of meaning gathered particular emphasis in the 1960s and in the USA, but then came over to the UK. 'Contemporary folk' as a term makes more sense there, where it is a natural evolution from traditional forms. I think the reasons there is such a dichotomy in the UK, and why the arguments can sometimes be so bitter, is that here 'contemporary folk' has no real connection with British traditional forms. Irrespective of the merits of the works of someone like Nick Drake or Incredible String Band, I can see little in them either in content or structure which relates to the forms of English traditional music which I enjoy. In its own way 'contemporary folk' is remote from my tradition as jazz or opera. Call it 'folk' if you like, everyone else seems to, but I'm not going to be predisposed to like it just because of that label.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,SteveT
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 11:59 AM

"If you just put "folk" they assume you mean country and western and offer you a Dolly Parton album as first choice" (Musket 30 Aug 14 - 09:57 AM) Presumably you're happy that Dolly Parton's material is folk inasmuch as it has gained popular recognition as such; similar to PRS's acceptance of your own material as folk. (Do you have a website/Soundcloud/Youtube where I can listen to your folk offerings?)

"search on "contemporary folk."" (Musket 30 Aug 14 - 09:57 AM) I thought that this point had been dealt with earlier but I can't find the reference – perhaps it was in another thread. Someone stated that "you can produce something and call it a "reproduction antique" but can't just claim it as an "antique"." Following similar logic, it would be OK to call it a "contemporary folk song" but not to omit the "contemporary" part. I accept that, in the same vein, you could say that the prefix "traditional" was a requirement but I think the counterclaim would be that the word is understood in the absence of any other qualifier – in the same way that you don't, legally, have to call something a genuine antique; if the word antique is used without a qualifier the "genuine" is implied.

The points above are made, (despite taking on board Jim Carroll's point that the term is "not really used by the general public in any way other than in very general generalised references") on the basis of my view that "folk" has an academic/specialist meaning and a layman's meaning. If I'm using the layman's terms then, if it's generally called folk (including Dolly Parton, Mumfords and even my own poor attempts), it's folk - but the term then has so little meaning as to be worthless for academic/specialist discussions. Being involved in the music or entertainment business does not make one a specialist in "genuine" (see above) folk any more than being involved in one area of research (such as mediaeval British history) would make you a specialist in other, broadly related fields (such as modern American history). So what defines the specialist? Perhaps it comes back to the time when "Folk song" was first defined by those who had specifically chosen to study, collect and research such material and whether anyone since has come up with an academically rigorous alternative – or whether the only alternative is the "public acceptance" one of Amazon i-tunes.

I'm not suggesting either side in this discussion is fundamentally right or wrong, only considering the context in which the discussion is taking place and the usefulness of the term folk in those possible contexts.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 12:01 PM

"I'll ask the question one last time, and of course we are talking here about songs (or tunes) written in the 'traditional idiom' or 'imitating' or 'influenced by the tradition' (Songs that maintain that tradition and keep it alive)"

Ignoring the obvious fact that there is no one "tradition", "Folkish" is a term from the late 1940s that seemed to work. As sis "Folk idiom"

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 12:51 PM

Okie Dokie, so let's see if we can sum up this discussion for the benefit of Andy7 the OP

It's perfectly acceptable to write a song that is influenced by and respects the tradition (accepting the fact as correctly stated by Dick above that there is no 'one tradition')

And it's perfectly acceptable to describe that song as a 'song in the folk idiom'

Tell you what, in the interest of plain english, that the mass population might understand, let's simplify that description and call it a 'new folk song'

who knows, maybe when we've got used to that, we could simplify it even further and just call it 'Folk'

Perhaps then we could remember just how much has changed in 60 years, call it the 2014 definition, and then come back here in another 60 years and argue about it!

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 01:13 PM

Having had my little moment of sarcasm, I will just say that we do of course, as 'folk' fans, (whatever your definition) owe a great debt to the likes of Jim Carroll and his tireless work in recording, protecting and maintaining traditional song. Thank you Jim.

And just to repeat what I said earlier, I've enjoyed this debate, and if by chance I'm still around in 60 years time, expect me to be a bit grumpy, I'll be 110 by then ;)

John

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 02:05 PM

One of the problems of all this of course is that the term 'folk' is applied to songs that bear no resemblance to folk songs in any shape or form whatever - the tired old 'I ain't never heard a horse sing' excuse being put forward as a replacement for an argument.
I take Steve's point about attaching definitions "freezing the folk process", but if, as I believe to be the case, that process is dead, it is frozen anyway and all we can do is assess it in retrospect.
I have yet to be persuaded that that process is still a living one.
Our folk songs recorded and reflected the aspirations of entire communities, not tiny groups of specialists who self-consciously met once every whenever to listen to each other sing.
They arose from the experiences of those communities, served them for a time and disappeared when they had served their purpose, other than those few that were caught like butterflies by collectors and archived or published.
They were part of those communities social history - a ground-level view of their everyday lives.
The universality of their themes allowed many of them to take root wherever they landed and become an expression of lives there.
I would love to believe that this is still happening, but I can't see how it possibly can.
The oral tradition no longer exists to cater for such creations, technology has guaranteed that they are stillborn, fixed in the form the creator gave them, and more importantly, the sole property of the creator.
I know it was MacColl's dream that the folk song tradition could be used to create new songs to express the lives of 'ordinary people', (whoever they were) - it simply didn't happen, or not to the extent he believed it could.
The revival, in Britain at least, seems to have imploded into a dwindling number of somewhat eccentric specialists somewhat remote from the world in general - it serves itself rather than the communities it once represented.
The songs have lost their 'folkness' inasmuch as they are now the personal properties of their creators unless any of our singer/songwriter friends are happy to declare they are happy to relinquish any rights to their creations - (long, pregnant silence, I suspect).
One of the main practical points I raise has been carefully shuffled around - that of ' where do we go from here?'
I can now turn my radio or television on virtually seven nights a week and find a programme on folk song or music, ranging from recorded and filmed pub sessions to archive selections of past performances to intelligent analytical discussions on various aspects of both.
One of the first programmes we watched when we first moved over 15 years ago was entitled "Has Traditional Music Sold Out?"
I can go out four nights a week and listen to traditional song and music sung and played to a passable to an excellent standard by participants aged from old enough to drink (mostly) to wrinkleys like myself.
Thousands of youngsters are now taking up traditional music, guaranteeing its survival for at leas another two generations.
All this was achieved by a few people concentrating on what they meant by folk/traditional and using that to build a foundation for the future.
Is that happening elsewhere?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 02:30 PM

look -this is getting all too complicated. Why don't we just sing what we want to, in whatever style we like.

then if anyone in the distant future gives a shit about what we were up to =then THEY can decide it was folk music.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 02:51 PM

"Why don't we just sing what we want to, in whatever style we like."
Who ever suggested anything else Al?
This isn't about what we sing but how we promote it.
Who gives a shit - those who wish to discuss it obviously.
Don't want to be rude but if you don't, feel free not to take part.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 03:04 PM

Somebody mentioned the first use of the words 'folk song'. I know this has been posted before but a volume of poetry was published in 1860 with that very title. All of the pieces in the book were written for the book by the author. None of them ever became folk songs under any description of the words. (Just for fun. Not trying to make a point.)

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 03:15 PM

"published in 1860"
Wannabes have been with us for a long time then?
The word 'folklore' was said to have first put in an appearance some fourteen years before that in 1846 in a letter to The Atheneum written by William Thom, but of course, everybody already knows that.   
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 04:03 PM

Jim, I generally find myself either agreeing with, or at least accepting, your contributions to these discussions, but I am having a little difficulty just now.

You have often referred to songs being written in your part of Ireland, and I assumed you meant right up to the present day. And yet you also refer to the folk process being dead. Do you mean that new songs are being made but they are not becoming folk songs? If so, what is preventing them? Are the original versions instantly frozen, by recording or print? Are other people learning them but not changing them at all?

"Our folk songs recorded and reflected the aspirations of entire communities, not tiny groups of specialists who self-consciously met once every whenever to listen to each other sing."

Weren't Henry Burstow and Walter Pardon (for example) likewise specialists, taking an interest in songs from earlier times, an interest that was shared by only a very few of their contemporaries?

"They arose from the experiences of those communities, served them for a time and disappeared when they had served their purpose, other than those few that were caught like butterflies by collectors and archived or published."

What about the songs from the 17th and 18th centuries (whether originally made by peasants or professionals) being remembered and sung by Henry Burstow in the 19th century and Walter Pardon in the 20th?

The early collectors quite deliberately picked and chose what they regarded as authentic "folk" songs and turned their noses up at other songs. But their criteria were essentially subjective and aesthetic.

There have always been people making new songs, and some of those songs have been learnt and sung by other people, sometimes in a process as recognised by the 1954 definition, sometimes by much more deliberate re-writing.

The environment has changed over the centuries. Cheap print certainly made a huge difference to the dissemination of songs, whether or not it was the original source of many of them. Then collectors started issuing song books. Now we have recordings. All these media facilitate the movement of songs to new mouths, and to some extent inhibit variation. But they have not stopped it.

And some segments of "the folk" have embraced new songs to the extent of claiming them for their own. Ask Dave Webber about Padstonians complaining about his singing "their" song which in fact he had written.

Enough rambling for now!

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 04:13 PM

[[[[" I'm also aware that than my few acquaintances and fellow researchers have a different concept of what 'folk' is"
Millions?
Give us a break Steve - would there were anywhere as near as many involved.
If there are so many - why has nobody ever come up with a workable definition - let alone a consensus?
Jim Carroll}}}}

' millions more people' Jim, I was referring to the man on the street, Joe public, the real folk. Walk out on the street and ask anyone who isn't a professor of folk music if 'Little Boxes', 'Freight Train', 'Blowing in the Wind' are folk songs.

Walk into your local folk club and ask anyone who isn't a professor of folk music if 'Freeborn Man', Fiddler's Green', 'Shoals of Herring', 'Waltzing Matilda', 'The Band Played Waltzing Matilda' are folk songs.
Whether MacColl or Bellamy did or did not want to call them folk songs is irrelevant to this discussion. Neither of these had or have any influence on dictionary definitions. Joe Public, the man the street, the folk, do.

You asked for us to give you other definitions of folk song. Here's a clumsy shot.
1) 1954 take 2. (One of the first clauses was dropped within a year by the IFMC.)
2) Any song sung by participants in the folk revival.
3) Any song found in the Folk section in HMV and other music stores.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Bill D
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 04:39 PM

threads on the meaning of folk

Or, just ask me. ☺ I have explained for 15 years here that it isn't a definition, but a process of elimination/inclusion based on easily understood and mostly universal categories. Some music obviously is.. some obviously is not... and in the middle it will always be fuzzy.

Then I will explain art vs. craft, pretty vs,ugly... and by petition, good vs. bad.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,SteveT
Date: 30 Aug 14 - 04:46 PM

Jim "unless any of our singer/songwriter friends are happy to declare they are happy to relinquish any rights to their creations" (Jim Carroll 30 Aug 14 - 02:05 PM) I don't know if this qualifies but my Soundcloud page (which I created because some strange individuals sometimes ask me for the words/tune) says "If you want to sing any of these songs at singarounds etc, feel free to adapt them to your own style but, if you're going to sing them, please don't just learn the tune and sing the words from a sheet, songs are for singing not reading!!! (If you forget any words, just make your own up.) The songs are not here to be passively listened to but are for those who want to learn them to sing themselves. The greatest compliment you can pay to a song is to sing it better than the person you learned it from."

I hesitate to call myself a songwriter and I'm not the most friendly person you could meet (so I probably wouldn't qualify as anyone's "singer/songwriter friend") but, as far as I'm concerned, anyone is free to sing my songs: if they can make any money doing so, good luck to them. The only thing I'd object to would be if someone claimed one as their own in order to stop someone else from freely singing it. (Having said that there's little chance of anyone making money from my songs and I actually doubt anyone else would want to claim them!)   

Unlike Musket, I don't believe I write folk songs but as Richard Mellish (30 Aug 14 - 04:03 PM) seems to be suggesting, I tend to believe that the process is still creating folk songs, albeit slowly, and I hope my approach to any songs I've made up is in keeping with that belief/hope.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 31 Aug 14 - 04:01 AM

I write songs and the few that bring the bacon home are marketed as folk.

If they were marketed otherwise, the champagne might not be quite so good a vintage... (Perspective. I couldn't live on what I get. Overgrown hobby and good luck if truth be known.) That said, I'm not a professional performer and tend to write for others. (My own act, just me and guitar, I slip in a lot of takes on traditional songs, or folk songs as Jim would call them.)

One excellent example of the living folk tradition is how it has evolved to encompass style and performance since 1954 or whenever. Music is an abstraction. That it can be a carrier for portraying historical or human accounts is wonderful, but many traditional songs are as much about sex as any rock n roll song and many contemporary songs fit the bill "songs of the people."

Just look at the list of Mudcat threads at any particular time. Lyrics req' or which song has a line in it about shaving a turkey etc. not a folk song amongst them if the irrelevance brigade have their way.

That's it folk!

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 31 Aug 14 - 04:15 AM

Richard
Songs were being written here as far as we can make out in Ireland up to the beginning or Word War Two.
Rural Ireland still had a fairly strong oral tradition and entertainment in areas were strongly based around the home - the crossroads dances were gone but the kitchen dances were still happening.
The cuird (Coore), where neighbours would get together to sing, tell stories, play music or simply swap news, formed the basis of rural entertainment.
Around here, this seemed to have gone by the 1950 and people began to look outside the home for their leisure time activities.
I'm sure people still made songs - I know for a fact that one or two people still are, but they stopped being publicly circulated - what has gone is the opportunity to share them.
The songs i referred to as being still passed into the oral tradition, are those made by Irish Travellers; non-literate and without any great access to mechanically produced music to any great degree until the advent of portable television - we estimate that singing around the fire died out among those we were recording in London somewhere between the Summer of 1973 and Easter 1975.
I know songs were still being made and probably sung by them later than that, but I suspect that has disappeared with the clamping down of the larger unofficial stopping places.
They, like us, have become passive recipients of their entertainment.   
Sorry for any confusion.
It's true what you say about Walter certainly - in fact he always insisted he didn't sing until the revival picked him up.
Walter grew up in a family with two singers, mainly his uncle, Billy Gee.
When he was a very young child, the singing was done at Harvest Suppers; the family worked for the local farmer; Walter could not recall any of these.
He vaguely remembered his Uncle Billy attending Agricultural Workers Union Meetings in North Walsham and hearing him sing after one of the meetings.
When this went, the singing took place at a few home events, Christmas parties mainly, but these didn't happen very often and Walter, still a child, only ever sang one song at these, 'Dark Eyed Sailor,' "Nobody else wanted that one".
Walter was in the Army during the War, and when he returned home, the singers of the family had died, so he began to write down all the songs he could remember having been sung, with the help of surviving family members, mainly his mother - he memorised the tunes by picking them out on the melodeon.
That formed the basis of Walter's repertoire - what he put together then, and the tiny handful that we and others managed to wheedle out of him later.
Walter always insisted that, as far as he knew, there was no other singing in his area when he was young.
Sam Larner said that when he was young there was a regular singing session at the Winterton local, The Fisherman's Return "all the real singing was done at home or at sea".
This died out before the beginning of W.W.2 with the advent of the radio.
Sharp always talked about a dying tradition - may have been an exaggeration but I believe it carried some truth.
By the time the B.B.C. mounted their mopping-up campaign in the 1950s they were largely recording a remembered tradition rather than a living one, with a few exceptions.
Sorry to bang on about this for so long, but as I said - a complicated subject.
By the way - if anybody is interested, Pat and I wrote an article on Walter Pardon for a Festschrift of essays dedicated to collector, Tom Munnelly, some years ago - happy to pass it on to anybody interested.
"Walk into your local folk club and ask anyone who isn't a professor of folk music if 'Freeborn Man..."
Sorry Steve - I don't count misinformation picked up off the street as a definition.
Walk into a folk club and you your probably be told "Piss off, we don't need a definition" - and quite likely be asked to leave, judging by the way some of these discussions end up.
I need a fairly solid definition for whet we choose to do - I would have it would have been even more-so with your work.
I really am not being pedantic, just trying to make sense of a great deal of material in order to give it a little more context than just a number of songs, so somebody else can make use of it.
More to say, but have got typer's cramp and I haven't had breakfast yet - and damn - the sun's shining, so I won't be able to escape the acre of bog we euphemistically refer to as a garden.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 31 Aug 14 - 04:56 AM

an acre.....! I never realised we were talking to landed gentry. you and Musket must get together and talk about problems with staff, and how they expect wages these days...

I appreciate your needs as a critic and collector. The trouble is - its the tail wagging the dog. all these eejits are trying to write 'in the tradition' to satisfy the agenda of various diktats (now reinforced with the tags of academia!) - and really its as though dramatists were writing scripts with Gadzooks sire! every second line.

with a sinking heart I recently watched a band, fresh from their Uni course in folk music and going great guns on the festival circuit, singing one of their songs with a chorus that something something something hey me lads!

the trouble is, literature had TS Eliot and Leavis - we had Ewan MacColl. He was clever, but not clever enough. His legacy has been that we have a generation whose work tries draw attention to language rather than communicate with an audience.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 31 Aug 14 - 05:23 AM

Oh, I dunno. Come midnight one evening last week, I was telling everybody they were my best pal. Communicating with an audience is fine, living up to their expectations is another. Van Morrison doesn't know the meaning of communicate, respect or decency, but he is idolised by those of us who he treats with contempt at his gigs.

Anyway Al. What's all this about paying wages? To work for me is a privilege. They can always sell copies of my autograph on eBay if they are skint.