Folklore: Has the folk Process died?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Nov 19 - 07:48 PM

As a semi-outsider in the matter of the history of folk music, except in the narrow field of Irish traditional instrumental music, I find myself thinking that there's an awful lot of up-your-own-bum stuff in these discussions (ever the diplomat). I remember that Woody Guthrie said that he "made up" songs (I suppose as opposed to "composing" them or "writing" them). Well I guess that somebody, or a bunch of somebodys, "made up" every single piece of music way back in the mists of time, so it seems odd to me that a major qualification for a song being a folk song is that its origins are lost or that it's "anonymous." That's just accidental. Somebody or other still "made it up" and, qualitatively, it should be no different, say, from a song of similar era whose maker-upperer we DO know the name of. To me, that anonymity thing is a cod-qualification. There are loads of Irish tunes that I've played for years, assuming they were traditional, only for me to find out by accident that a named fellow had composed them. Could have fooled me, but then to me "scholarship" doesn't sit easy with my need to go out and have fun of a Friday night, and I'm damn sure that for every "scholar" laying down the lines there are a hundred people playing the music who give not a damn. This "folk process" malarkey simply means that we don't look at written-down versions or learn stuff rigidly by repeated listening to records. It's a rather haughty (and somewhat forbidding) expression which attempts to formalise the cheerful and chilled and casual approach to tunes or songs we've heard our mates or our dads and mums or their mates doing and we've copied them fortuitously imprecisely. You can't do that unless you're having fun...

They played Ewan singing Manchester Rambler on Radio 3 (!) this morning. If that isn't folk music well I'll eat my hat. But it don't qualify, do it? So what is it then?   

Enough. I'm going back in me 'ole...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: Lighter
Date: 18 Nov 19 - 08:12 PM

> the 1954 definition says there is no more folk music being created. Most posting totally reject this idea.

Steve Gardham is 100% right. After my 15 years at Mudcat, I think it's very true that "most" of us truly believe that "folk music" is still being created on a grand scale, maybe even more than in the past.

But they're referring to a very different sort of music, partly because they were led astray by '60s marketing ploys, partly because they feel a fondness for various romantic connotations of "folk music."

Was Shakespeare Shakespeare? Depends on who you mean by Shakespeare.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 18 Nov 19 - 10:40 PM

No, he wasn’t,Shakespeare , he was another man of the same name. sums up the folk thing for me.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: The Sandman
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 01:43 AM

99per cent folk song collectors have an agenda of what they perceive as collectable, an exception was alfred williams, who asiunderstand it collected everything that he heard being sung

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 04:39 AM

a fondness for various romantic connotations (Lighter)

Coming back to the rustic pot. If your authentic pot and my craft-potter lookalike are next to one another on the mantlepiece how much of the difference between them is romantic connotations associated with the 'real thing'? A ceramcist studying rustic pots would need to know, or maybeseek to tell us, which was which.

Is a romatic view, maybe a romantic view of the politics of a time past, lurking in the objections to the 'looks like a duck and quacks like a duck' approach.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 04:40 AM

Sorry that was me

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: Iains
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 05:08 AM

@ Steve Gardham. You raise some interesting points. I concede your point on stories I was thinking more in terms of mythology/folklore where a core idea remains intact over long periods of time as in the welsh and Irish example I quoted. The cattle raid of Cooley originated in the first century BC according to some sources snd was transmitted orally until the 6th century when it was first written down. It was the function of the bards to be a walking talking history book up until the church took over their role with the advantage of using written record.They survived in Ireland in some form up until the 17th century.
Your point about fairy tales is very valid., There is a flood mythology in many cultures worldwide. To argue it was the same one would be a bit of a stretch, but there are areas where horrendous floods occurred at the end of the ice age, two would be the scab lands of North America and the English Channel. There is also evidence of ancient mega tsunamis (the chevrons in Madagascar may have been created by a 91m tsunami) If a cargo cult developed in PapuaNew Guinea on the basis of Dakotas dropping manna from Heaven,then a wall of water 91m high would likely have an even more striking impact on the few that got away andfigure prominantly in any subsequent tales.
This can be developed in all sorts of ways. Ihave no problem accepting the same core story can be spread within different cultures(as the fairy tale you offer as an example) sometimes the core story may relate to identical events in different places. I keep banging on about the core for one reason. Some of these "myths" contained information.

It is Sellers’s contention, eloquently expressed in her recent book, The Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt, that the Osiris myth may have been deliberately encoded with a group of key numbers that are ‘excess baggage’ as far as the narrative is concerned but that offer an eternal calculus by which surprisingly exact values can be derived for the following:

1 The time required for the earth’s slow precessional wobble to cause the position of sunrise on the vernal equinox to complete a shift of one degree along the ecliptic (in relation to the stellar background);

2 The time required for the sun to pass through one full zodiacal segment of thirty degrees;

3 The time required for the sun to pass through two full zodiacal segments (totalling sixty degrees);

4 The time required to bring about the ‘Great Return’4, i. e, for the sun to shift three hundred and sixty degrees along the ecliptic, thus fulfilling one complete precessional cycle or ‘Great Year’.

Computing the Great Return

The precessional numbers highlighted by Sellers in the Osiris myth are 360, 72, 30 and 12. Most of them are found in a section of the myth which provides us with biographical details of the various characters. These have been conveniently summarized by E. A. Wallis Budge, formerly keeper of Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum:

The goddess Nut, wife of the sun god Ra, was beloved by the god Geb. When Ra discovered the intrigue he cursed his wife and declared that she should not be delivered of a child in any month of any year. Then the god Thoth, who also loved Nut, played at tables with the moon and won from her five whole days. These he joined to the 360 days of which the year then consisted [emphasis added]. On the first of these five days Osiris was brought forth; and at the moment of his birth a voice was heard to proclaim that the lord of creation was born.

Elsewhere the myth informs us that the 360–day year consists of ‘12 months of 30 days each’.6 And in general, as Sellers observes, ‘phrases are used which prompt simple mental calculations and an attention to numbers’.7

Thus far we have been provided with three of Sellers’s precessional numbers: 360, 12 and 30. The fourth number, which occurs later in the text, is by far the most important. As we saw in Chapter Nine, the evil deity known as Set led a group of conspirators in a plot to kill Osiris. The number of these conspirators was 72.

With this last number in hand, suggests Sellers, we are now in a position to boot-up and set running an ancient computer programme:

12 = the number of constellations in the zodiac;

30 = the number of degrees allocated along the ecliptic to each zodiacal constellation;

72 = the number of years required for the equinoctial sun to complete a precessional shift of one degree along the ecliptic;

360 = the total number of degrees in the ecliptic;

72 × 30 = 2160 (the number of years required for the sun to complete a passage of 30 degrees along the ecliptic, i. e., to pass entirely through any one of the 12 zodiacal constellations);

2160 × 12 (or 360 × 72) = 25,920 (the number of years in one complete precessional cycle or ‘Great Year’, and thus the total number of years required to bring about the ‘Great Return’).

Other figures and combinations of figures also emerge, for example:

36, the number of years required for the equinoctial sun to complete a precessional shift of half a degree along the ecliptic; 4320, the number of years required for the equinoctial sun to complete a precessional shift of 60 degrees (i. e., two zodiacal constellations).

These, Sellers believes, constitute the basic ingredients of a precessional code which appears again and again, with eerie persistence, in ancient myths and sacred architecture. In common with much esoteric numerology, it is a code in which it is permissible to shift decimal points to left or right at will and to make use of almost any conceivable combinations, permutations, multiplications, divisions and fractions of the essential numbers (all of which relate precisely to the rate of precession of the equinoxes).
The pre-eminent number in the code is 72. To this is frequently added 36, making 108, and it is permissible to multiply 108 by 100 to get 10,800 or to divide it by 2 to get 54, which may then be multiplied by 10 and expressed as 540 (or as 54,000. or as 540,000, or as 5,400,000, and so on). Also highly significant is 2160 (the number of years required for the equinoctial point to transit one zodiacal constellation), which is sometimes multiplied by 10 and by factors of ten (to give 216,000, 2,160,000, and so on) and sometimes by 2 to give 4320, or 43,200, or 432,000, or 4,320,000, ad infinition.

If Sellers is correct in her hypothesis that the calculus needed to produce these numbers was deliberately encoded into the Osiris myth to convey precessional information to initiates, we are confronted by an intriguing anomaly. If they are indeed about precession, the numbers are out of place in time. The science they contain is too advanced for them to have been calculated by any known civilization of antiquity. Let us not forget that they occur in a myth which is present at the very dawn of writing inEgypt (indeed elements of the Osiris story are to be found in the Pyramid Texts dating back to around 2450 BC, in a context which suggests that they were exceedingly old even then.(https://erenow.net/ancient/fingerprints-of-the-gods-the-quest-continues/31.php)
There is a passage in the Old Norse Poetic Edda known as the Grimnismal, a passage spoken by the god Odin in his disguise as Grimnir, in which the end of the world is described. Describing the scene in which the slain warriors of Valhalla issue forth to battle against the forces of destruction in the battle of Ragnarok, the Grimnismal tells us that
five hundred gates and forty more
are in the mighty building of Walhalla
eight hundred Einherier come out of each one gate
on the time they go out on defence against the Wolf. 540x800 = 43200

Now you may think the above is a load of old bollocks but:
The numbers clearly relate to precession. It is critical the numbers transmit accurately otherwise we have events like Ramadan and Easter darting about all over the place, because the numbers are plain wrong. Apologies for being longwinded but it is the only way to make the point that core is key and must maintain integrity. Decoration around the edges is not a problem.How ancient societies came by these precessional numbers opens up another can of worms.
So coming back to the discussion I would argue some songs and stories may change overtime, some may not. It depends on the tale/narrative. Prior to the age of scrivenors a professional class(bards) was responsible for the transmittal of history. I doubt they allowed themselves too much poetic license. To the purist Caxton started the rot followed by the broadsheet ballad printers. But was there ever a time the downtrodden masses burst into self penned song or is it a device invented to further pigeonhole the genre by academics?
My view is that old or new it is all folk.- happy,sad, bawdy, historical, mythical - box it up how you like. Do not be surprised if my box is different to your box. Does it really matter? The entire exercise of dissection is entirely subjective therefore if there is discussion on boundaries, it is not a subject to get embroiled in bitter argument-that just stifles discussion. I dont care if someone picks holes in my analysis, they may well be better qualified to comment or simply construct a more balanced argument. If the majority posting here take the broader definition of folk, as I do, surely that calls for the 1954 definition to be modified.
and thanks to guest Kenny for drawing attention to other threads on the subject.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 05:10 AM

"have an agenda of what they perceive as collectable"
Nonsense, I'm afraid Dick
All folk song collectors went out to collect folk songs
If we'd been train spotters wed have gone ou to watch trains, not buses
Iw as our job to find fok songs, it would have been musicoligists to collect everything the folk sang
If we'd have none that we'd have to haves spent the rest of our lives sorting through many hours of recordings to sort out the folk songs from everything else and our singers would have died off if we'd have gone gor everything they had
As it was, we spent many hours recording background information and opinions from the singers
There were few, if any full-time collectors, so our time had to be given with the view to having earn a living in full time jobs
Give us a break
Jim

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 05:46 AM

Aha, now I just found something in which an 'expert' states that Walter Pardon learned some of his songs by listening to records on a wind-up gramophone. Any ideas who this expert may have been? And on whether or not this same expert later vehemently denied that any such thing happened. Which ones and were they recorded or not? We shall never know. What we do know is that there were disagreements about whether Put A Bit of Powder on it should have been released, one argument being that it wasn't all folk. And for me there were clearly 'agendas' some of them potentially valid, one does not have to take sides on this, but it seems undeniable that there were agendas.

If this is regarded as trolling I am sorry. It sort of extends the 'have an agenda about what is collectable' point to a wider one including 'have an agenda about what is issuable on record as part of a project of presenting a particular singer to the public'.

Please let me know if this comes across as trolling. And I shall go away.

I am sure everybody is grateful that so much material was captured on tape or via transcription. The point has been made very often on these threads.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 06:00 AM

This new book shows how far things have moved on with the craft of collecting. Lots of practical advice that goes WAY beyond the "1954" platitudes in this thread.

Gilman and Fenn, Handbook for Folklore and Ethnomusicology Fieldwork (2019)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 06:18 AM

Interesting reference Jack. Thank you. I guess this book is about how to answer the question posed by this thread in such a way as to produce findings that are relatively transparently arrived at and can be evaluated?

It seems to me that what Steve says about the '54 definition makes sense, trying to come up with a definition that fits various international contexts must be tricky. I know there has been a lot of discussion of definitions....

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: Iains
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 06:20 AM

I do not believe the umpteen ways of skinning a cat has been applied in this thread about collecting. Collecting is a given. It is what is being collected that is the issue. It is it's categorization in terms of an inadequate definition that is under discussion. If you think it is all platitudes perhaps you should find another thread.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 06:24 AM

Jack, it seems that some of the stuff in the book applies generally to qualitative research, with specialised material for a specifically music-related context. If I had money to spare I might buy it. I have read stuff about qualitative research before and even done some myself at a low and unpublishable level. Obviously, one cannot expect amateurs to achieve what this book suggests, which, regrettably, leaves both their methods and their findings vulnerable to critique. But as I have learned, pointing this out isn't necessarily the way to make oneself popular on Mudcat. :(   ;)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 06:26 AM

Ians: if that was directed at me, then as a courtesy I shall not post any more. Thank you for an interesting thread. I shall continue to read it with interest. Adieu!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: Iains
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 06:53 AM

No Pseud it was not aimed at you. I find your contributions thoughtful.
I have a problem with a thread being dismissed as platitudes.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 07:04 AM

Why is it that the only people who ever cite '54 are those who seem to have an objection to any form of definition, I wonder ?
Any definition is an attempt to identify the uniqueness of that being defined
There are a whole bunch of books on collecting written by people who have spent years on the folk-face rather tat sitting on their bums warming the seats of institutions. Kenneth Goldstein springs immediately to mind, Lomax has written numerous guides to the activity, Bruce Jackson, who trawled the Texas prisons wrote one, Henry Glassie, did an excellent guide based on his work in Ireland, Tom Munnelly put out a private document based on the comprehensive collecting of Irish folklore written by Sean O'Sullivan.
All these people weer active collective collectors and all made it quite clear that each particular field demands it's own particular knowledge and skills
To dismiss the work of those with some background in ewhat they wrote of and claim that any work covers everything and negates everything les id somewhat.... can't think of an apt word
Personally, I have found the work of Glassie, Munnely annd Goldsien the mostt usefull to date, with a fair measure of the experiences of D K Wilgus and Eleanor Long thrown in for good measure
And of course, there's always Helen Creighton and Edith Fowke to fall back on
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 07:04 AM

I was the one who used the word "platitude".

Current books on folklore studies, like the one I pointed to, have more than 100 years of experience since Sharp's time to draw on, and that experience is both about methodology and practicality. It's worth finding out how other people have wasted their time, made avoidable mistakes, got arrested or shot at, found religion and contracted STDs in the course of their fieldwork.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 07:31 AM

How often did the collectors collect everything that a source singer could recall?

If they didn't collect everthing how did they chose what they collected? Did they explain to others how the choice was made before or after they did the choosing?

Those are questions that could come after reading a basic book about sampling.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 07:38 AM

Still sitting here as a semi-outsider, I'm just musing that an activity that involves informal socialising, enjoying the crack/craic, often getting a bit pissed with your mates, singing old songs and changing things a bit because you can't quite remember it all or like it better your way/your dad's way, same with old tunes, doing your own thing with people of similar sentiment, etc., needs a bunch of academics in a committee room to anguish over a definition of what we're doing/should be doing/shouldn't really be doing if we want to call it what they see as "folk..."

Anyone care to define classical music? Off to the committee room then! :-)

Defining it won't preserve it. That just puts people off. What preserves it is people having fun with it.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: Lighter
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 07:43 AM

> how much of the difference between them is romantic connotations associated with the 'real thing'?

Plenty. I'd say the words "connotations" and "associations" in general account for every bit of the substantive (i.e., non-microscopic) difference.

A person who knows nothing about rustic pots, like me, would declare them to be "obviously" identical.

But if I were told (truthfully or otherwise) that one was a fake/counterfeit/imitation, I would value it less, or not at all, even while appreciating the skill of the faker/emulator.

Is the famous version of "Edward" a "folk ballad"? The question can be a red herring. What's interesting are matters such as the formal and thematic qualities of "Edward," the degree of somebody's editing (if any), how and where (if we care) it was obtained, what it resembles, who (if anybody) likes to sing or recite it, how much of its history or background can be discovered, and innumerable other questions of human interest - to people who are interested in them.

The 1954 definition describes a real phenomenon, an identifiable kind of music and song. Other kinds of music and song are other kinds. So what?

That says nothing about their quality or value.

Whether a piece can be fit (or be forced to fit) the '54 definition doesn't affect the definition's accuracy as a description of an identifiable category.

All such fitting does, it seems to me, is affirm that the fitter likes to think of the piece as "folk" - for whatever connotations and associations that may have for him.

Researchers, listeners, and performers will all go their own way.

The play's the thing.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: Iains
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 07:54 AM

Jack Campin I think I was too ready to jump in there, I apologize.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: Iains
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 08:07 AM

https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/how-myths-evolve-over-time-and-migrations/

An interesting bit of research.


https://www.jstor.org/stable/6151?seq=9#metadata_info_tab_contents

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 08:18 AM

Iains: cheers.

Jag

With you on 'sampling'. The same thought had occurred to me with respect to making assertions based on interviews within 20th century folklore work. Sandman has made a related comment in the past when he has questioned how far generalisations based on one or two 'traditional folk' singers could be generalised to apply to them all.

In some frames of mind I might feel like Steve Shaw does. But not all of the time.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 08:31 AM

Value has nothing to do with collecting or shouldn't have
It is not up to us to decide the value of what the folk had to offer and the more they had to say about their songs and stories, the better.
The uniqueness of their songs and stories become obvious the minute you talk to the singers - they regard them as different - who are we to argue ?
I've put up far too many examples of their doing so for it to be necessary to repeat but it really is time sme of the 'researchers' and singers started to listen to and act on what they had to say

The fact that ballads like Edward still remained important to the older generation, particularlty Travellers is important in its own right - I will repeat what Wexford traveller, Pop's Johnny Connors said about it because I believe it can't be repeated enough

“I’d say the song, myself, goes back to.... depicts Cain and Abel in the Bible and where Our Lord said to Cain.... I think this is where the Travellers Curse come from too, because Our Lord says to Cain, “Cain”, says Our Lord, “you have slain your brother, and for this”, says Our Lord, says he, “and for this, be a wanderer and a fugitive on the earth”.
“Not so Lord” says he, “this punishment is too severe, and whoever finds me”, says he, “will slay me, “says he “or harass me”.
“Not so”, says Our Lord, says he, “whoever finds Cain and punishes or slains (sic) Cain, I will punish them sevenfold”.
And I think this is where the Travellers curse come from.
Anyway, the song depicts this, this er....
1 call it Cain and Abel anyway; there never was a name for the song, but that what I call it, you know, the depiction of Cain and Abel.”

I believe our old songs are important history carriers describing the experiences of those most effected but least consulted by the events described - wars, land siezure, upheaval from countryside to towns, women used as ladders to be climbed to improve social status, those who follewd their men to war and loaded the guns on the front line.... all writ large in our folk songs
We recorded a song here in Clare that described (in comic terms) an event during the War of Independence that failed to make the history books and has been completely forgotten by today's locals
HERE

Lumping these songs in with those bought on song-sheets and in books is, to me, to reduce the importance of our traditional songs
We have yet to follow up our discovery of the local song-making traditions that were features of rural life throughout rural Ireland, particularly among the undocumented Traveller communities
We haven't begun to understand how our oral songmaking worked and if we are ever to get anywhere making an educated guess much of the information lies in the songs themselves and what the singers had to say about them

Time after time we were told how important these songs were to the people who retained them (even to the extent of one singer describing how he once tried to teach his dog to sing to stop them from dying with him)
If they weer important to those people surely they have to be important to us (even if it is only for their continuing entertainment value)
Jim

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 08:47 AM

I'm just musing that an activity that involves informal socialising, enjoying the crack/craic, often getting a bit pissed with your mates, singing old songs and changing things a bit because you can't quite remember it all or like it better your way/your dad's way, same with old tunes, doing your own thing with people of similar sentiment, etc., needs a bunch of academics in a committee room to anguish over a definition of what we're doing/should be doing/shouldn't really be doing if we want to call it what they see as "folk..."

The point was to define the remit of an association with its own journal. If you could write up enough of the social interactions you listed in a sufficiently enlightening way, you might have got your article accepted, though it would have taken some work. This is what you'd have been trying to fit into. Looks pretty straightforward to me what the writers were interested in discussing with each other.

Part of the index for the first few volumes

Do you see anything there about telling people in a British pub what to do? Entomologists don't give orders to cockroaches.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 08:50 AM

"Entomologists don't give orders to cockroaches."
Far too often it's forgotten that the collector is the pupil and the singer the teacher and not the other way around
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: Iains
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 08:52 AM

Entomologists don't give orders to cockroaches. Wonderful! nearly made me spill my coffee.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 09:08 AM

But if I were told (truthfully or otherwise) that one was a fake/counterfeit/imitation, I would value it less, or not at all, even while appreciating the skill of the faker/emulator.(lghter)

It's the emulation aspect I have been thinking of. As an aside there are those who would say the emulator should have been using their skills to do something 'creative', which thought comes after reading a line in the book page linked by Iains "The power of imagination of man is rather limited"

I think the history of the songs and tunes is fascinating but for me it is in the context of 'what the folks sang' (or played) and separate to the side of things Steve Shaw summarised. How much of Steve Shaw's "informal socialising, enjoying the crack/craic, often getting a bit pissed with your mates, singing old songs and changing things a bit because you can't quite remember it all or like it better your way/your dad's way, same with old tunes, doing your own thing with people of similar sentiment" was what Walter Pardon's forebears were doing in the singing room at the Mitre Tavern? If it it was similar and the folk process was alive then isn't it still alive now?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 09:19 AM

@Pseudonymous (mainly). On the sampling. I think in the Walter Pardon thread Jim Caroll gave a full list of his repertoire as known by the collectors. Including the music hall and parlour ballads. I think The Sandman has referred to one of the older collectors elsewhere who took the lot.

I can see that the 'first revival' collectors didn't have the resources to collect it all and can't see Sharp using his time to note down parlour ballads. By Sharp's time the entymologists where kiiling everything within the capability of their collecting tools and tipping it out on the bench when they got home.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 09:24 AM

"'what the folks sang' (or played)"
That's fine Jag, for those who are interested in that sort of thing - it's also important, but in practical terms, unless you are prepared to devote far more time then most of us had/have, you really can't do it all
It was extremely difficult to get, say Walter Pardon or Mary Delaney to sing their non-folk songs
Walter described them (on tape) as "them old things" and deliberately took up his family's traditional songs as a young man because his relative contemporaries had abandoned them for the "modern stuff"
Mary firmly refused to sing her extensive C and W songs into a tape recorder because, she claimed, I only sing them cos that's what the lads ask for down in the pub"
Jim

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 09:33 AM

By the way
"Entomologists don't give orders to cockroaches."
Another thing far too often forgotten is that Cockroaches don't take orders from Etymologists and is disparaging to suggest that singers take orders from collectors
THat needs to be remembered by those accusing us of manipulating our singers
Both Walter and sean nós singer Joe heaney were very much their own men, but both have been accused of being stupid and malleable enough to allow commentators to manipulate them
Joe Heaney's epic interview session with Maccoll and Seeger stands as one of the most important examples of a traditional singer talking of his art, yet it has been bedevilled by accusations that the singer was gullible enough to be manipulated by his collectors
Anybody who spent time with Joe would know that Joe wasn't that type of individual
Jim

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 09:33 AM

But, but, but was a peasant pot thrown or coiled

Call me "Just a plucky peasant pheasant pot chucker" but if it was cast it wasn't peasant either.

Mr Red (ex potter, & sometime plucky pedant)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 09:36 AM

Far too often it's forgotten that the collector is the pupil and the singer the teacher and not the other way around

That isn't a relationship that leads to good fieldwork, either way round. It's perfectly possible to value the people you're studying as human beings without taking their word for it on everything.

Nigel Barley quotes a saying among anthropologists: "when the culture you're studying starts to seem normal, it's time to go home".

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: The Sandman
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 09:36 AM

alfred williams was the collector i mentioned

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: Lighter
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 10:03 AM

> If it it was similar and the folk process was alive then isn't it still alive now?

But at some point in the past, it was vibrant. Now it seems to be on its last legs.

Of course, they've been saying that for a hundred years, but those opinions were based largely on nostalgia, wistfulness, and a necessarily limited fund of knowledge.

Now we see a lot more of what's happening - and isn't.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 10:07 AM

I agree with Jack Campin's comment on not necessarily taking the word of those you are 'studying' on everything.

But for a reader of the output of such studies, the context etc. etc. will also affect how far they take the word of the subjects, as presented/recorded as a reflection of the facts.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 10:23 AM

But at some point in the past, it was vibrant. Now it seems to be on its last legs.


What do we know about past timescales? Are we comparing the last 50 years or so with a much longer period in the past, rather than "a point in the past" ?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: Lighter
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 11:32 AM

Period, not point.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 11:44 AM

All the same, we are comparing 50 years or less now with multiple periods of that length in the past. How much folk processing was done between 1750 and 1800 and how did it compare with what is done now.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 11:49 AM

Was it A L Lloyd who said that once literacy was invented there could be no pure oral tradition? Please excuse me if this is wrong. Somebody made this point. Not sure I agree with it, as there may still be some pockets of culture not touched by literacy...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 11:58 AM

Whoever said it and no matter how accurate it was we all know we are not dealing with pure oral tradition here. Like most things in the world evolution has taken place and accelerated evolution in many things. Rather than admit the 'folk process has died' I prefer to think, it has changed, out of all recognition maybe, but something resembling it is still there.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: Iains
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 12:05 PM

once literacy was invented there could be no pure oral tradition
If true(and I do not know enough to comment) then in Ireland pure oral transmission ceased a long way back. It is held by some that Ogham script predates the early Christian church in Ireland, maybe predating it's 5th century arrival by centuries. Are we talking widespread literacy of Victorian times, or of a very small elite dating back to Roman times(in the uk)


https://www.jstor.org/stable/25516056?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 12:28 PM

") then in Ireland pure oral transmission ceased a long way back"
No it did not and that was exacerbated by th fact that many Irish singers did not read English as their main language was Irish
Even in the first half of the twentieth century many Irish, while being able to read, often struggled to both read and write English, particularly in The Gaeltachts, though they often sang English songs
The Travellers could neither read nor write as a community and their pariah status made it highly unlikely that they could seek assistance from the settled communities - this was still largely the case in the 1970s
Travellers were the most important preservers of many of our longest and rarest ballads and stories, all learned and carried orally
The subject of learning songs from print is complex, many singers didn't trust printed versions, others treated the printed word as sacrosanct and unalterable and, unless the songs were perfect (many broadsides couldn't be sung without radical alteration) they were rejected as not good enough
It is nonsense to claim there is no such thing as an oral tradition, almost as nonsensical as suggesting that so many traditional songs originated from print
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 12:35 PM

Bloody hell... I take my eye of this thread for 2 days..
.. and there's no way I'll ever catch up on reading it all...

Have I missed much...???

Sooooo...

Is the folk process dead..???

on drip feed in a coma...???

skipping about merrily Twice Round the Daffodils...???

on it's way home in a taxi with an oxygen cylinder for when needed...???

I wish I had time to read the past 2 days posts to find out...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 01:10 PM

In my opinion, for what it's worth, as a creative enity, it's been dying inge the mid 19th century and is all but gone
Jokes are still told and football chants still made, but are they too basic to be creative....
I've ben told kids no longer make songs - dunno
I think somebody mentioned Mondegreens - I don't believe mistakes are part of the folk process, which, o me, implies deliberation
Jim

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 01:12 PM

So bearing in mind I've missed out on a lot of the usual 'debate'
since I last looked in here...

I could settle comfortably for a constructive explanation that:
.. a previously long recognised folk process has become nearly obsolete.
But life goes on..
New different unfamiliar folk processes are evolving,
while we older genertions still obsess obliviously about our fading older established folk process...???

Personally, I'm no longer young and culturally in touch enough
with those new processes,
but neither do I have a vested interest in the old one
that they are supplementing, or replacing...

All I can do is keep an open mind and try to be aware
that new things I might not understand or even like, are developing...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 01:37 PM

The trouble with being creative is that it might take effort. I would have thought that a true folk process would be severely hobbled by too conscious effort. Now spontaneous creativity when you're not even thinking about being or trying to be creative...

I would have thought also that the easy availability of the written word, of scores, of cheap tune books, of anything you like up on YouTube, of music lessons executed by classically-trained teachers, plus the increasing ability of people to make use of these things (some of us folkies are middle-class university types, tha knows, not horny-handed sons of toil...) might militate against the hallowed folk process. On the other hand, there's fierce resistance to the open use of such things (music stands verboten, or at least ridiculed...) in many quarters, etc. We just have to worry whether the people passionately arguing about it, as here (healthy) are in declining numbers (not healthy...)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: Iains
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 02:37 PM

Jokes are still told and football chants still made, but are they too basic to be creative.
The trouble with being creative is that it might take effort.
How about Ball of Kerrimuir r. I last heard it in the prospect of whitby on wapping wall over 50 years ago. It must have had a thousand verses then. it was only based on villagers back then- now it uses the entire county.
But to be serious, there seems to be a majority agreement the folk process has not died, it has merely evolved as it did when literacy arrived on the scene, was further modified by collectors attempts to codify the genre, and finally changed out of all recognition by scientific advances from the wax cylinder, to the tape recorder and through to the ubiquitous mobile phone. If the general consensus on an international thread is that folk is alive and well then it could be that the some who beg to differ perhaps should step back and re evaluate. Even collecting modifies the folk process just like Schrodinger's dammed cat.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 02:48 PM

"Ball of Kerrimuir r."
Like all jokes it is centuries old and has added and shed dozemns of verses thoughout that time
It has also been in print with dozens
of verses
I believe jokes are the nearest things we have o a folk process and have always been bemused by how they have travelled often unbelievably quickly but....!
Like all forms of folklore, the media has made an oral tradition virtually unnecessary
Nice one in Ken Loachs's latest masterpiece
Did you hear of the dyslexic insomniac who lay awake all night wondering if there was a Dog
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: Has the folk Process died?
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 19 Nov 19 - 02:53 PM

Iains -...

Ding dong dox
pussy in a box...

there you go.. the start of a 21st centuryfication of an old folk rhyme...