What makes a new song a folk song?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,Spleen Cringe
Date: 08 Oct 14 - 06:17 AM

I just wanted to come back on the opposition suggested by Spleen between submitting to the raw experience and caring about the labels. I think it's a false opposition - it's the raw experience that made me care about the labels.

Yes... but for every Lord Franklin, there's a bunch of trite ditties about life on the farm (for example), with little value except in their antiquity - "Out with My Gun in the Morning", anyone? It makes the average chart pop song look profound. And for every ballad with a powerful tune, there are others with slight, unmemorable tunes that exist merely as a vehicle for the narrative - in many cases vehicles that have should have failed their MOTs years ago, and would have done had they not been preserved by collectors. That's where categories and labels, rather than a subjective approach, are problematic. The whole but is it traditional, though? approach can end up a triumph of provenance over quality. And opinions about quality, like mine above, are subjective. So my problem with "anything goes" folk clubs is not about whether the offerings are traditional or not, but whether they are performed well and float one of my musical boats. What it says on the tin can't begin to help me with this... Having said that, I don't want Cliff Richard songs any more than Jim does! But that's my problem (and a reflection of my personal taste) and no-one else's. In the meantime, I'm happy that folk, for want of a better word, can incorporate what Jim wants and what Al wants, even if I don't necessarily share their deepest desires.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,Howard Jones
Date: 08 Oct 14 - 06:09 AM

"all songs were new once"

But they weren't folk songs when they were new, they were just new songs. It takes time and process to turn a new song into a folk song. That needn't take very long, if the song touches a nerve with enough people and there's a mechanism for it to be taken up and shared. On the other hand, some very old and very well-known songs aren't 'folk'.

What makes it difficult now for a new song to become a folk song is twofold. Firstly, there isn't the same environment of people singing songs to entertain themselves and others - that's been taken over by readily available and portable professional entertainment. Secondly, where songs do enter the popular imagination there is nearly always a definitive 'correct' version to refer back to, so the variation which is an essential element of folk song is much less likely to occur. It's not impossible though.

A new song is just a new song. It may be 'folk', or it may be something else, and that may depend as much on the background and performance choices of its composer as it is to depend on anything inherent in its structure. it might be both, if it can be performed as well in one genre as another.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 08 Oct 14 - 06:00 AM

Many broadside ballads were copyrighted, you old fool. That was how sellers made money out of the huge cost of printing them and selling them.

Variations that some collectors got a stiffy out of what they put down to regional variations within the oral tradition were often no more and no less than attempts to get around copyright. Little Musgrave and Matty Groves were both copyrighted broadsheets, one getting around the copyright of the other... The many variations come from the two distinct published ones etc.

By Jim's reckoning, they are not folk songs then. When I decided I liked so learned Richard Thompson's Valerie, I misheard a line, and instead of singing 'she has gold in her ear" I sang "she's got Gonorrhoea..." Does that make my earlier mistake "in the oral tradition"???

Michael. I am aware of your age, I wouldn't take the piss out of nurse and medication otherwise. If you insist on taking the credit for claiming part of a genre as being the only bit deserving of the group term, carry on. I feel less guilty that way.

I love how some say that those who don't get hung up over the actual definition of folk are somehow goose steppers, (Jim's lovely description of me,) haters of music and other such nonsense.

The question was related to how you claim a new song as folk. Well, if it ain't opera, acid rock, punk, rap etc, what is it? Well, which audience did you have in mind when you wrote it? Oh, a folk audience?

It's a folk song then.

Ask writers of contemporary folk.

zzzzz

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 08 Oct 14 - 05:33 AM

Just to point out, Ian, that I am well over 80 and Jim isn't; and that I have been making the same points I am making here since I started writing about folk music in the public prints in an edition of the TES in October 1969 -- exactly 45 years ago: so that if anyone is 'supporting' anyone here, then Jim is supporting me, rather than I him.

A taxonomic and semantic distinction, of the sort you appear to have so much difficulty in grasping.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 08 Oct 14 - 05:32 AM

" there is no evidence whatever to show that "most traditional songs" originated them,"
Poppycock and pedantry, a lot of traditional songs originated from broadsheet ballads.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 08 Oct 14 - 05:31 AM

I think the other thing to bear in mind is that music isn't just music - we all bring other elements to it which reinforce our own identity and prejudices.

This is what I was getting at with my question upthread about folk being 'the music of the people'. I think some people start from the proposition that folk is the people's music & then redefine 'folk' to fit. I just think they're great songs, and I've enjoyed some traditional song sessions as much as any other musical experience I've ever had.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Oct 14 - 05:23 AM

"have been copyrighted broadsheet ballads before ever tit trousers tried claiming them as from his or her mother's knee."
Broadside ballads were never copyrighted and there is no evidence whatever to show that "most traditional songs" originated them, though there is plenty of evidence to suggest that people have always made their own songs, despite claims otherwise.
More 'making it up as you go along', it would seem.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 08 Oct 14 - 05:18 AM

BH: There are those like you that want the tradition to be a museum piece, and there are those like me and many others who want the tradition to be a living, breathing and developing thing, which after all is the true nature of a 'tradition'

No. What Don, Jim, Michael and I (among others) are saying is the same thing that the folk song collectors said*. The tradition that gave rise to traditional songs - widely adopted, sung by ordinary people at work or round the fire - is, to all intents and purposes, dead. Changes in society killed it off, just as they killed the trade of the wheelwright and the street porter.

There is a stock of traditional songs and it's not being added to, apart from odd discoveries in archives. That's the bad news. The good news is that it's an enormous stock - enough to keep anyone going for a lifetime - and a lot of them are brilliant songs. And they're good enough to take whatever you throw at them as a singer or arranger. (As Martin Carthy said, the worst thing you can do to these songs is not sing them.)

Or you can sing new songs - it's entirely up to you. But wanting the tradition to come back to life won't make it happen - and saying that you're adding to the tradition won't make it true.

*A bit of double-counting there, as Jim actually is a folk song collector

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,Howard Jones
Date: 08 Oct 14 - 05:09 AM

"don't let any bugger tell you their vision of folk music is better than yours"

But Al, that is exactly what you seem to be trying to do with your own claims, and your denigration of traditional music.

Like MGM I don't see any musical connection between what you do and the traditional music which is at the core of 'folk'. Nevertheless I acknowledge that it falls within the wider understanding of 'folk'. What I object to is your (and others') continual assertion that yours is the True Way and that traditional music is an irrelevant anachronism. That it may be for you, and perhaps your audiences, doesn't make it true.

As I've pointed out before, 'folk' is a broad genre which now covers not only its original meaning of traditional music but also a lot more, some of which resembles traditional folk, some of which doesn't but somehow manages to sit alongside it, and some which is put in the 'folk' category because it can't really be put into any other genre and 'folk' is the closest fit. Some would say it's too broad and vague to be useful, but I would say no more than any other genre - they all cover a very wide variety of music, often with only a tenuous connection, which do no more than point you to the right section of the record shop. Terms like 'classical' or 'jazz' without any further qualification give you no more information about what you might expect to hear than does 'folk'.

I think this discussion has become the negative side of the "what I like is folk" claim - the fallacy that says "I like folk, I don't like that, so it can't be folk". Jim worries that folk clubs are being taken over by pop songs and that traditional music is no longer welcome in folk clubs. I think he is wrong, and that this is based on what he admits is a limited sampling - I think he has just been unlucky in the clubs he has visited. Al seems to think that his way is the future of folk - I think he is wrong too, but that's not to say that he doesn't have a place in it.

I think the other thing to bear in mind is that music isn't just music - we all bring other elements to it which reinforce our own identity and prejudices. This is as true of folkies as it is of mods, punks, goths, emos, Last Night of the Prommers and all the other groups which identify themselves more or less closely with a particular style of music. This makes it very difficult to discuss objectively, as this discussion has demonstrated.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 08 Oct 14 - 04:53 AM

I got as far as your 'giving a correct definition" before smiling.

You really think the term "folk" is anything other than what it is? Where music is concerned, it is a wide musical genre.

If you support Jim and his "oral tradition" nonsense, more fool you. Most "traditional" songs "in the oral tradition" have been copyrighted broadsheet ballads before ever tit trousers tried claiming them as from his or her mother's knee.

I mentioned Famous Flower of Serving Men as an example I happen to know the details of. it was written by Laurence Price and published under copyright in June 1656. If I could be arsed, I could find plenty more.

No problem, it remains a folk song. It's just that Jim's silly definition that you are supporting for some illogical reason falls at such hurdles.

If you recall, the question was "What makes a new song a folk song?" You and Jim think a new song can't be a folk song, whereas all songs were new once. Many of them copyrighted too. Indeed, just about all the ones any of us know have been published...

Don't worry though Michael. I only call folk music folk...

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 08 Oct 14 - 04:22 AM

As Don has already said, Muskie; no-one is 'claiming' anything. We are just giving a correct definition, as distinct from those who are doing what semanticists call 'over-defining'-- by which they mean trying to subsume more under an extant definition than its connotations can bear. You are the ones doing the claiming, in demanding a specific nominal status for an entity by which it is inaccurately designated.

I say again -- It's a free country: call it all 'folk' if you like. But remember that, if you then proceed to call every article of household furniture in your house 'a chair', you might have difficulty in deciding where to park your arse.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Oct 14 - 04:17 AM

" Vin Garbutt suggests calling his songs fulk music to get around the Carroll law"
More distortion Muskie
It's not my law - it isn't a "law" as you claim it to be and it certainly isn't mine - I wasn't born in 1846 when the term 'folk was first usd, I wasn't around at the beginning of the 20th century when 'folk song collecting' first got underway in an organised fashion.
Sharp wasn't in a position to consult me when he wrote 'English folk Song, Some Conclusions' and 'Folk Songs in the Southern Appalachians'
I wasn't interested in folk song in the early 1950s when the BBC embarked on its "folk song" project, nor was I invited to the Sao Paulo conference when the definition was arrived at.
Bert didn't ask my opinion when he and Vaughan Williams edited 'The Penguin Book of English Folk Song' or 'Folk Song in England'.....
It isn't a law, it's a definition - yopu wantrt to make a point - challenge that, not me.
You accuse me of lying - you could head a university course in untruthfulness, distortion and defamation
Get a grip laddie
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 08 Oct 14 - 04:01 AM

As far a Jack is concerned, what they have had to say has been distorted by agenda-driven collectors, or is not to be relied on because the old singer were attention-seeking liars playing to the audience.

Well. old man - you insist on distorting everything I have to say, so - why not? And the relationship between the folklorist and his subject was always an interesting one - careful not to step too far into that heart of darkness. Oo-er. Whatever the case, the old singers were passive to the collector's interest in their material which is an interesting dichotomy right there & a well documented on. You liken it to Botanical research - collecting the Seeds of Love no doubt. On that point, I rest my case; they are, after all, your songs now.

Have I ever seen a single book actually written by a Traditional Singer? Only one, as far as Bob Roberts can be considered a Traditional Singer - I've heard arguments both ways though his collection of songs issued by Topic as Songs from the Sailing Barges would seem to fit the bill. He wrote a book called Breeze for a Bargeman which, although sharing it's name with another LP of his singing, contains not one single mention of folk songs. Great book none the less. Recommended!

No, no point. Just interesting that's all.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 08 Oct 14 - 03:34 AM

This just in.

Millions of people to return their folk collection as Michael and Jim claim the term "folk" for a narrow section of the genre.

We interviewed one punter, by the name of Musket as he was attempting to wipe out his iTunes collection, not as easy as when an OSX upgrade does it for you (grr). He said "it's very difficult sorting out what is or isn't folk. Who'd have thought Famous Flower of Serving Men wasn't a folk song? I feel sorry for the bloke who got a PhD in the subject saying it was the getting around copyright in broadsheets that led to more regional variations of song than anything else. Seems that he must be wrong because Jim says it's more to do with the oral tradition.

In other related news, Vin Garbutt suggests calling his songs fulk music to get around the Carroll law.

😴😴😴😴😴

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Oct 14 - 03:34 AM

"you seem to have a lot of nasty arguments Jim. the Boat Band for godsake..."
Do you not find something incongruous about your statements statements Al?
You witter on about not taking any notice of people "who have awarded themselves some sort of pre-eminence" , yet you object to my citing an argument that took place o this forum with someone from The Boat Band, who you have somehow placed on a pedestal, above criticism - give us a break, you really can't have it both ways!
I have put forward what I believe is a rational argument - the only reason I have raised the question of my own experience is that you and Muskie have consistently attempted to claim that my arguments come from "a committee" or a "definition", suggesting that I am a "book enthusiast" when it comes to folk song - simply not true.
My opinions are based on a fair length of experience, but they are also based on what we have been given by the 'experts' - the older singers who were part of the folk song tradition.
Both of you have either ignored what I have put here from our interviews with some of them or, in Muskie's case, gone out of the way to dismiss them in an extremely insulting manner.
As far a Jack is concerned, what they have had to say has been distorted by agenda-driven collectors, or is not to be relied on because the old singer were attention-seeking liars playing to the audience.
Now that's what I call "nasty and abusive", as is the suggestion that disagreeing with you is in some way 'superior'.
It has never been a case of any music being better or worse than another - that is an ongoing dishonesty throughout all these arguments - it is about different definitions of music.
I suggest you read what Don has to say more carefully instead of patronising him by telling him not to be led astray by the likes of us, he has a knack of summing up in a few sentences what some of us take pages to say.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Don Firth
Date: 08 Oct 14 - 02:13 AM

I don't think I am "claiming" anything here.

The first song book I started learning songs from back in the early 1950s was a 35¢ drugstore paperback (Bantam Books) entitled "A Treasury of Folk Songs" compiled by John and Sylvia Kolb. The authors annotated each song. Genuine, traditional folk songs. Then, John and Alan Lomax's "Best Loved American Folk Songs." I think those two guys knew what they were talking about. Then on into collections by Cecil Sharp, Ralph Vaughan Williams....

And many songs from recordings by singers who annotated the songs they sang. Burl Ives, Richard Dyer-Bennet, Ed McCurdy, many others.

With each song I learned, I wanted to know as much as possible about its history, if it was connected with an actual historical event, and all that.

As I said, I do sing some songs that are "folkish," (e.g., "Copper Kettle," which was written by Ed Beddoe), but I don't claim they are folk songs. In my brief verbal "program notes" I give a bit of information about each song (being careful not to turn a concert into a lecture).

But the "folk song I just wrote on the bus this afternoon" is NOT a folk song. It may become one in time eventually, but only time and usage by others will tell.

Sorry! But that's just the way things work.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 08 Oct 14 - 01:10 AM

It's your word 'vision' that's noteworthy there, Al. You look at, say, one of your own songs, or one of Joni Mitchell's or whoever, and think you see a folksong. But you don't.

I could be down on my uppers & cheer myself up by saying that when I look at the piece of stale cheese which is all I've got, I'm looking at a nice plateful of tripes à la mode de Caen or roast turkey. But that won't make 'em so. And a chef or restaurant owner who put roast turkey on his menu and then served mouldy cheese, on the plea that that was his 'vision' of it, would not last long, and probably get into all sorts of trouble. 'Vision' isn't necessarily reliable as a taxonomic method. Accurate categorisation is.

So, once again, why have you insisted on this attempted takeover of an inapplicable term, and then gone on as if it's the correct categorisation. That's as mistaken, or as fraudulent, as my putative restaurateur above?

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 11:35 PM

you're a folksinger Don, you claim whatever helps you do the job. noneed to suck up to people who have awarded themselves some sort of pre-eminence.

in england we have a class system that buggers up and place limits on peoples lives. don't let any bugger tell you their vision of folk music is better than yours. don't be intimidated.

i think its the pope's fault. basically we miss someone telling us that that they are the true church. we feel guilty because we told his holiness to get stuffed - back in Henry Viii's time. so we keep letting these little tinpot despots kick the shit out of us. we think we don't deserve our freedom - and some people are smart enough to jump in and claim to be God.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Don Firth
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 08:25 PM

No, John, I DON'T want the tradition to be a museum piece. Nor is it.

But when someone steps up to the mic and says "This is a folk song I just wrote last week," he's talking nonsense. He's trying to claim a level of prestige for his song that it has not earned.

As someone up-thread pointed out, you can't write a folk song any more than you can write a hit song. Whether it becomes a "hit"--or a folk song--depends on what happens to it then.

I have a repertoire of a couple hundred songs. The vast majority of them are traditional folk songs. That does not prevent me from singing songs which are NOT traditional folk songs, but I don't try to claim that they are.

What's so hard to understand about that?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 07:58 PM

you seem to have alot of nasty arguments Jim. the Boat Band for godsake...

lets just make a deal you stop saying nasty abusive things about us. and we'll stop saying nasty abusive things about your kind of folk.

mutual respect is obviously too much to ask. but common courtesy should be within our reach.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 07:55 PM

I read your post first time round, and you see Don, that's exactly the problem And why this has been such a long debate.

There are those like you that want the tradition to be a museum piece, and there are those like me and many others who want the tradition to be a living, breathing and developing thing, which after all is the true nature of a 'tradition'

I wonder what those unknown folks who first wrote the songs that were handed down, or even the source singers would make of it, I suspect they would not want the tradition to die either!

John

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Don Firth
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 06:24 PM

This thread has long since passed it's "sell by" date. It's not just stale, it's gone downright rancid.

I said it here [CLICKY], and it remains true, like it or not.

Don Firth

P. S. Jeez, guys, get a life!!

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 05:35 PM

I suggested a way to deal with the issue a long way back in this thread.

Let's call traditional songs and tunes 'Traditional Folk', and new or modern songs or tunes that show a respect for or an influence from the tradition 'New Folk' Stuff with an American influence we could call 'American Folk' Stuff with an Irish influence we could call 'Irish'.....you get the idea.

Then, and here's the radical bit, we could group it all together and just for convenience, we could call it all 'Folk Music'

How's that?

John

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 04:14 PM

pfr -- very flattering, Thank you. But I have no pretensions to being a wordsmith, even tho part of my living has been earned using the ones that exist. & it's not my sort of music we are talking of. Not up to me, but to them, to find a name for the music they favour. Just wish they would stop pinching the one we have had for 168 years, and then go on as if they had thought of it first and we are nicking it from them.

But I am aware that by now that is probably sighing for the moon, pissing down the wind, trying to stop a bandersnatch... Wot with all those millions...

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 03:06 PM

I just wanted to come back on the opposition suggested by Spleen between submitting to the raw experience and caring about the labels. I think it's a false opposition - it's the raw experience that made me care about the labels.

The first time I heard really excellent singing - the kind of thing that stops you dead & makes you think maybe if I really work on it I could be a tenth as good as that - it was in a traditional session. The first time I heard a song and wanted to learn it right there and then, so that I could take some of that experience away with me - it was in a traditional session. The first time I was swept away by voices doing something more powerful and complex than I'd ever known voices could do - a bit like a Bach organ piece, but heard from inside the organ - it was in a traditional session. The first time I was so caught up in the music that it scared me (the music was so loud, and it went on and on), it was... well, you get the idea.

That's why I get arsey about classification - because the gulf between that experience and what I'd been doing down at the Folk Club (viz. splashing about in a pool of well-intentioned mixed-ability strumming) is... well, it's not even funny.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 02:26 PM

"PFK
I'm no expert either - same background as yourself"
you can say that again, but you try to give that impression, I think you are a Booby.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 01:30 PM

There is an alternative word currently to be found gaining ground
in certain agitational sectors of the Modern Art scene...

"Cuntemporary"....


That might appeal to a few mudcatters...

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 12:48 PM

Oh dear, looks like Blandie's been sent to Coventry again. The witches attempt to keep mum in this cathedral. The answer in in 8 with a Y at the end...

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 12:28 PM

PFK
I'm no expert either - same background as yourself
My point remains about my doubt about how many people give a toss one way or another
It seems to me tat we are talking about a non-definition arrived at by a tiny and rapidly shrinking number of people - no basis for re-defining anything
My two main concerns are improving the situation of traditional song in Britain and squaring my research work with my club involvement.
As it stands from these arguments, we would have to be a bunch of schizophrenics to come to terms with what we have at the present time
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,Phil
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 12:09 PM

Although I'm not rich and although I'm not poor,
I can use the word 'folk' just like thousands or more...

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 12:07 PM

Btw Jim, I was refering to hundreds of thousands / millions as counted over
the 4 decades or so the term 'contemporary folk' has been in 'common useage...

"hundreds of thousands, if not millions of UK citizens,
be they musicians, journalists, critics, consumers, whoever..
have grown up using the reasonably viable name "contemporary folk music""

Obviously I don't mean the proportion of population who give a monkey's
about 'folk' as it is right now.

For that number I have no clue,
but I wouldn't be too optimistic...

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 11:41 AM

Jim, I'm no academic musicologist - I'm just an ex council house kid
who somehow managed to pass the 11 plus 45 years ago...

I'm certainly not a scholar either - I turned my back on all that over 25 years ago
[when I was unable to complete a post grad dissertation due to recovering from an operation,
and mounting debt from having to live off a credit card until I was back up on my feet again...].

So clearly 'hundreds of thousands / millions' is a tongue in cheek edumacated guesstimate..


However, seriously, my 'intuition' garnered from 4 decades of wide reading of music journalists and critics,
points to 'contemporay folk' as being a more than adequate generally accepted term amongst music enthusiasts..

Just google 'contemporary folk' for an indication of it's immediate current usage...
[About 7,200,000 results (0.45 seconds) ]

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 11:14 AM

"MGM·Lion, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of UK citizens,"
There is no evidence (apart from claims here) that such numbers are even aware of folk songs in any shape or form, let alone, incline towards a specific name for them.
Do you have any evidence at all of this statement?
If such numbers were interested enough to designate any form of title to folk song, the scene would be far healthier than it is at present.
As it stands, even the relatively small number of people involved in folk song (of any description) are not united enough among themselves to agree what it is and settle for anything from Muskie's fundamentalist, "folk is anything I choose to call folk", to hardened 'purists'
If it was just a question of using therms like 'contemporary folk', there wouldn't be that much of a problem - not as far as the traddies are concerned anyway - not sure how many would put their hands up for 'I Don't like Mondays' being anything but 'rock'
You can't claim 'common usage' as a definition until you have just that - common usage.
What is being argued for here is that traditional folk song is no longer relevant so we can call anything we wish folk.
I even had a long and not very pleasant (eventually) argument with a member of 'The Boat Band' who claimed that 'traditional' was no longer valid to traditional folk song as clubs presenting the other stuff have their own traditions, so we should go and find another title for our music!
give an inch......!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,Spleen Cringe
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 09:04 AM

Sorry me above.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 08:38 AM

Do I dislike traditional folksong? No, I love it, and many of the people involved. I think its 'the tradition' that sends a shudder through me

Thanks Al. You managed to put succinctly into words one of the things that's been bothering me.

What's left of the 1970s teenage punkrocker in me
still has problems with elevating & worshipping musical virtuosity for it's own sake...

Me too, PFR. As Mssrs Strummer and Jones put it, "No Elvis, Beatles or the Rolling Stones in 1977". Growing up on a generation of musicians who turned snottiness into an artform leaves it's mark - and a good thing too. I think I still prefer the 'couldn't give a fuck' pose to wide-eyed reverence and trying to please the grandparents...

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 08:19 AM

My personal bias is towards 'Trad folk' rather than 'contemporary/singer songwriter folk',
if anyone cares to know.

MGM·Lion, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of UK citizens,
be they musicians, journalists, critics, consumers, whoever..
have grown up using the reasonably viable name "contemporary folk music".

A name which has existed and been so widely accepted for at least 40 years...

It may not be perfect for describing the music 'considered' folk
which is not strictly of Trad form and provinence..
But it does ok for most of us / them..

If you absolutely insist we need a new more precise defining name;
you are our much respected 'word wizard' here at Mudcat.

Why don't you come up with one for us that satisfies all your criteria,
then see how far you can get it recognised and adopted
by the greater UK music loving / making / consuming mass population....

I'm sure any word you come up with for us would be a very good 'un !!!

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 08:16 AM

" folk is more to do with the individual. "
Irish music is largely based on solo and duet playing, virtually all singing is solo
Its seems to me is what I am hearing from England in particular, are groups, largely amplified, and mainly devoid of anything resembling folk style (including your own playing)
This is not a criticism, just pointing out that you have chosen to ignore the basis of folk music and have even expressed hostility towards it.
What on earth do you mean by "individual" - surely not 'individual groups'?
I, like John, wonder why you are so insistent in your demands to identify what you do with a music you apparently have no love for?
Traditional song and music is firmly documented as folk - we've got the books, archives and index lists to prove it.
You don't even have a consensus among yourselves, never mind a definition for what you do.
A few people turned the fortunes of Irish music around by basing what they did on what had gone before.
We have the youngsters flocking to the music, we have weekends throughout the year dedicated to players and singers like Joe Heaney, Mtrs Crotty, Seamus Ennis, The Russles, Joe Cooley, Mary Anne carolan, Geordie Hanna......, while at the same time, young musicians are forming bands and groups and and experimenting with the music.
There is a future for Irish folk music here - the only way you seem to have a future in Britain is to un-define the music and make it a poor relation of the pop scene - that's what the revival was set up to escape from all those years ago.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 07:52 AM

What's left of the 1970s teenage punkrocker in me
still has problems with elevating & worshipping musical virtuosity for it's own sake...

..and then there's the phenomena in 'folk'
that could be refferd to as

"the Rolf Harrisification of aboriginal music"

.. or more specificallly in our case,
the appropriation of old songs of oppression, strugggle, and resistance
by upper middle class music college trained 'folk' performers...


Though, of course I'm obviously bound to like Chumbawamba's "English Rebel Songs 1381-1914" CD
[ both versions ]

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 07:44 AM

The problem is still, Al, why you want to call your sort "Folk", when it is, at best, only tenuously related to what bears that name in any reasonable application of the term. Your sort of music is (in that Abe Lincoln way of "Those that like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing they like") doubtless perfectly agreeable. But as it is something so different from all these fiddling kids and [sez you!] out-of-tune old boys {who could IMO outsing you into the middle of next week any day of this week}

WHICH ARE IN FACT WHAT "FOLK" ARE --

WHY NOT JUST FIND YOURSELF ANOTHER NAME FOR IT?

You lot over there are pertinaciously and obstinately avoiding giving any answer to this simple ~·?·~, despite its having been put I can't be bothered to begin to count how many times by Jim & John-the-Bounty·Guy & me et al.

So -- That's the problem.

Best regards. You likely to be over this way any time again soon?

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 07:26 AM

thats what i say - lets leave it at that. for you folk is thousands of musicians playing irish music to a high standard.

you are welcome to it.

for me - folk is more to do with the individual.

but you're happy. i'm happy. what's the problem. its just two different sensibilities.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 06:41 AM

"to be honest to me it sounds like a vision of hell. thirty kids sawing away on fiddles at the same tune"
EDEL FOX
GRADAM
Pádraig Keane
There are literally thousands of young Irish Musicians playing music to an excellent standard
Edel Fox, apart from being the excellent young musician she is, is now a 'veteran' music teacher, having taught some hundreds of young musicians in this area.
Pádraig Keane is the grandson of our late friend Tom McCarthy, who moved back to Clare from London in the 1990s
His 3 daughters and son all play Irish music to the highest standard, and all their children are now playing.
Pádraig won the Gradam award in 2011
The big breakthrough was when music schools were set up. attracting musicians from all over the world - including many new young players, many of whom became top class solo players.
The scools were based on the older (often veteran) musicians teaching and talking about the music
The second breakthrough came when the musical and arts establishments recognised what was happening and began to promote traditional music for the first time
Nowadays, we have excellent coverage on all aspects of traditional music on the media and, upp to the present economic slump, asking for a grant to research or to issue albums, was pushing on an open door
All this was achieved by building the scene on the existing tradition - this is why arguing against this garbage is worthwhile.
You want to stay where you are - fine, but don't knock what you know nothing whatever about
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 06:34 AM

Why shouldn't they be ours????? Because they made the fecking things! They are theirs! The Revival treats such works as fair booty by removing them from their initial social context and making them into mere folk music by isolating them from the folk that made them. I listen to recordings of old travellers and I know I'm in the presence of something truly numinous; the real thing as it were. Hell, I've even stopped singing things like McGinties Meal an' Ale after immersing myself in a night of Davie Stewart a couple of years back & concluded that I was not worthy. Listening to the old singers goes beyond mere taste - it's to experience something truly lost to us in terms of the human aesthetic, replaced in Folk Music by increasing MOR sensitivities and prissy slick muso blandness. I know singers who think of the old singers as a source for songs for their own repertoire, but this is wrong, surely? At least it is to miss something utterly crucial in the original performances which even you are all too ready to dismiss as being of secondary importance to the songs, which you so glibly claim as your own.

That's what I mean by paternalistic collectors only interested in people as passive song carriers by the way - it's a lot easier than understanding them as an art-form integral to their cultural context.

*

By the way, I never got your reply on why you, who has rejected research, should be right and a century of study should be as wrong as you claim they are - did I miss something?

I favour experience over research; I take as I find. For sure my bookshelves are heavy with tomes on Folksong, from Sharp to Roud, but precious few of them (such as Alison MacMorland's book on Willie Scott Heard Laddie o' the Glen) make any attempt to get to grips with the life, times, culture, genius of the singer and their repertoire. That's the essence of it for me. Willie Scott's songs are no more ours than the solos of John Coltrane. Both are integral to the essence and genius of an individual master without whom they are meaningless. It's like trying to appreciate Ian Curtis by listening to the busker knocking out Joy Division songs on Corporation Street. There is the reality, there is the annotating and archiving, there is the taxidermy, the taxonomy & the sorry sick reek of formaldehyde, then there are the Parlour Arrangements, by which point all reality has been lost. And I'm just as guilty of this as anyone else! A few years back I performed Willie Scott's Kielder Hunt and one punter told me my version was definitive. I felt sick to the gut and went away and recorded THIS in an attempt to feed something of my own life and times back into the song : not Folk, but feral experimental music arising from a lifetime of one sorry punk relating to Traditional Song and their singers as an integral aspect of my culture.

Did you miss something, old man? Times it looks like you missed the nose on your own face.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 06:34 AM

You beat me to it with "their" Jack...

Apparently diddycoy is a swear word now? Strange. Around Donny, that's what the Irish travelling families call themselves. Especially the ones who have sold up and built large ostentatious houses in Norton. I'm sure they keep a copy of "The Travelling People" in hardback on their onyx coffee table.

Here's a diddy song about the trials and tribulations of keeping up to date with The Inland Revenue and the hardship of clearing up rubbish, used pampers and needles when they move on, trying so hard to leave the place as they found it, (other than the lead missing off the church but hey ho.)

Yeah, we can all stereotype Jim.
😴

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 06:20 AM

'do i dislike traditional folksong. no i love it'

Relieved to hear that Al! On the 'source singers' I suppose we do have to remember that they did not set out to be performers, or claim to be the greatest singers, so we do have to allow for that, but you are quite right that it does not do 'folk' any favours when someone tries to be 'authentic' by copying that average singer.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 05:59 AM

lets leave it at that.

you've got your definition. you've got the Irish scene and you're happy with that. to be honest to me it sounds like a vision of hell. thirty kids sawing away on fiddles at the same tune. a hundred kids cocking their leg up at the same time in Irish trad dancing. about as much individuality as the Nuremberg rally.

we've got the folk - the people who turn up to ur folk clubs, thinking mistakenly that what they enjoy is folk music - when they sing all sorts of stuff.

i think we've got the best of the deal. but if you're happy. so be it.

and BH - do i dislike traditional folksong. no i love it, and many of the people involved. i think its 'the tradition' that sends a cshudder through me.

i think its when people interpolate something great out of something that is well dodgy - like these source singers Jim's always going on about.

Take that Taylor bloke thaat we get Brigg Fair from. Bert Loyd interpolates a modal style of singing. Carthy puts it into practice. It seems more likely to me that the bloke just couldn't sing in tune.

if you went to the old crown digbeth in the mid 70's you would find an entire roomful of people deconstructing songs like Byker Hill along Carthy lines.

its that whiff of extremism i get from Jim's insistencies that get my goat, and i'm a capricorn.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 05:22 AM

"Perhaps that ought to be : THEIR best and rarest ballads?"
Why?
The are part of the English, Scots and Irish ballad canon - why shouldn't they be "ours"?
Don't understsnd the last bit - I take it that it's yet another plea for the unimportance of the folk repertoire - you've already given us your slant on that.
By the way, I never got your reply on why you, who has rejected research, should be right and a century of study should be as wrong as you claim they are - did I miss something?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 04:48 AM

Travellers, Irish and Scots in particular, were responsible for passing on some of our best and rarest ballads.

Perhaps that ought to be : THEIR best and rarest ballads?

For a Few Folksongs More : Where popular music had no value, folk, sometimes, had its price. That is why the folk song collectors appeared.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 04:32 AM

"Mary Delany, but point taken."
Another pop at another source singer then
Wonder what it is you respect about folk song if you disregard the people who gave them to us the way you appear to
Travellers, Irish and Scots in particular, were responsible for passing on some of our best and rarest ballads.
Perhaps it's just the "diddys" you don't like - whoops, forgot, you've no time for any of them, have you?
If I based by definitions on who or what people listened to I wouldn't have one - just like you
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 04:20 AM

Oh no! Now we're analysing the argument! Someone'll be writing a song about it next - The Ballad of the Old Man and Blandie (...Blandie! You know what you are? Just a dirty son a...). I must admit, I get a bit shy when that happens., though I must point out any rough & tumble here is all very good natured - at least it is on my part. Respect where respect is due and all.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 07 Oct 14 - 03:12 AM

"Considering folk is more than traditional"
.,,.

Ah, but who 'considers' so? Begging that jolly old ~·?·~ again, eh Muskipooze!

≈M≈