BS: What is folk music?

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 15 Mar 00 - 08:49 AM

Well, gents, I've missed most of the posts except the last few, but how does this strike you--

Hymns were and are folk music, the folk music of the Christians, and in particular many US genres of more recent hymnody such as southern gospel, older praise choruses, contemporary praise choruses (ALL sappy!!!)

AND

although many connoisseurs (sp???) adore their sap served up via electric git-tar and drums, etc., we have a weekly service where we actually do ours the old-fashioned way: including banjo!

And I am no Biblical expert, but I believe one could say that the book of Psalms was an early DigiTrad, going from the Judaic heritage and early Christian church right up into now with many of the praise choruses being taken right outta there... adaptations (improvements??!!!) running rampant

So everyone, hug a Christian folkie today, even if they don't know they are one...

What about cantors in synagogue, wouldn't that also be included...

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 15 Mar 00 - 10:45 AM

Kendall:

Okay, okay, I am mollified.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: kendall
Date: 15 Mar 00 - 01:38 PM

Never assume that I'm serious.

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: Whistle Stop
Date: 15 Mar 00 - 03:37 PM

Praise, I think you're on target with the "hymns are folk songs" statement (although the last time I went to church a lot of the hymns I saw in the book were actually attributed to professional composers of yore). I'm curious, though, about how both the Book of Psalms and the Mudcat DigiTrad fit into the "oral tradition" prerequisite that so many folks are keen on. Seems like a contraditction, but maybe I'm missing something?

[I'll refrain from entering the fray concerning electric guitars -- as a proud practitioner of both acoustic and electric guitar music, I would be tempted to jump to the defense of electrics, but my better judgment tells me that would be one fight too many for today.]

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: Bert
Date: 15 Mar 00 - 03:44 PM

I don't consider Hymns to be folk music. They come under the heading 'sponsored music' along with national anthems and anything else that the government/authorities/leaders wish you to sing.

Except for the few that escape like Amazing Grace.

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 15 Mar 00 - 08:28 PM

its a worthy cause, this "folk" search, because the clearing house approach of taking anything people are interested in brings up questions, and brings together differences. This is stimlulating and fun if we don't get opinions confused with facts. Music thrives on subjective opinions, and this is good. Folks who know what they like abound, but folks who know why,...well not so many.

It is apparent that many different kinds of "folk music" exist, and that not all of them have agreeable adherents. I could almost believe it if someone said that the chord Bminor was a real turn off for them, and that if a song came on with that chord in it they would storm out. Hmmmm.

Folk enthusiasts are not all open minded I guess.

But I still hold to the ideas of diversity and common interest, and I love a show that has hymns, labor songs, blues, swing, broadside ballads, sea shanties, etc... ad infinit-a-culturinitem... Also, mood changes are refreshing, and make any show more interesting. Long live emotional diversity!

new age, old age........ let's enjoy a song........ happy, sad, love , rage......... life is hard,... not long. (%

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Mar 00 - 09:17 PM

"I don't consider Hymns to be folk music" - West Gallery Music? Or Moody and Sankey for that matter?

I don't know which is the greater, the number of folk songs with tunes that started off in church, or the number of hymn tunes that started off as secular folk songs. Either way it's a big number, and some of the best songs in both traditions.

It isn't just us have these discussions - there's a controversy right now about "what is classical music?", with some records being banned from classical music charts, and disputes over what criteria should apply.

Actually, as terms go, "classical music" as a word which is supposed to cover all the types of music that it is used to cover is an extraordinary misnomer.

At least all the things we might variously describe as "folk music" are made by folk - whereas a great deal of music called "classical" just isn't classical in any recognisable use of the words, except as an arbitrary label. (That's not to impose a value judgement - but noone wopuld decribe the Millennium Dome as "classical arhitectire" - but the equivalent bit of music might well have the word aopplied to it.)

Then there is "what is music". Or "what is poetry?", just as endless a discussion.

The thing is, whatever we do, people seem to get involved with bringing things together that are very different, and using the same word for them, and pretending that because they same word is used they musrtt have a llt in common - and then other people, logically, try to breaking them apart again, because in fact they have so little in common.

The map is not the territory.

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 15 Mar 00 - 09:25 PM

TtR, That sounds like what we try to do with our singalong band. See, in this neck of the woods, as in many others, hymns are just part of the folk tradition.

Bert, I guess it depends on who the folk are whose folk music we're talkin' about, and what springs to mind when you think about what a hymn is. The one's I am talking about are the ones passed from soul to soul, not the ones bound up in official hymnbooks of this or that denomination.

Thinking now about the women's group I used to attend weekly, a wacky rural mix of charismatic Mennonite and conservative Baptist women, who, when they got together as women, in one of their homes, were just folks. All the songs were learned orally, and if you had a new one to contribute, good on you. Someone would say, lets' do this one, and most all would just join right in. If you were new you listened till the chorus came then joined in, and after awhile you knew the songs too. In this group, you could also say, "What's that one that sounds like this (humming a tune fragment) or has this phrase in it-- and someone would know the song and a little bit about it, or just start it. Some of the songs were old camp meeting songs, some were new praise material, some were by members who just had a song come up out of them. Not so different from Mudcat, really. If you can get folkier than that, let me know where to go and I'll be there.

These women knew something about music and people, and being just folk, that I needed to learn. Bet I'm not the first flatlander they gentled, bet I won't be the last. Bet more of us could enjoy that fellowship and love of song they had, and be as surprised as I was by where it is sometimes found.

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: Whistle Stop
Date: 16 Mar 00 - 08:24 AM

Praise, I have to agree. What you have described sounds to me like the very essence of folk music; both in what people brought to it, and in what they got out of it. I'm jealous.

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: GUEST,Frank Hamilton
Date: 16 Mar 00 - 09:25 AM

Bert,

There are examples of which some might put into the rap classification such as the "jivin" of Fats Waller. One notable difference it seems to me is that rap is a constant harrangue, an angry shout which has little dimension. There are no sad or happy raps it seems to me but just angry ones. Even the exhortation to "put your hands together" is more of a stentorian command than an appeal to have fun. Don't know Billy Cotton and how that fits in.

When other forms of African-American expressions in music are examined, there are dimensions such as happy blues or funny Calypsos. Rap seems emotionally and musically limited in spite of the sampling of rerecorded music.

Frank

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 16 Mar 00 - 10:41 AM

As to rap becoming folk material, first I have to confess I don't like far-and-away most of it that I've heard. Just so you know my bias.

That having been said up front, it seems to me that rap is not likely to be learned by the listeners and done by them and passed along. I see it as a performer "art" only. Perhaps there might survive a tradition of off-the-top-of-your-head rap, like off-the-top-of- your-head calypso, but the individual pieces being handed down? Nah.

YMMV.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: Bert
Date: 16 Mar 00 - 11:32 AM

Frank,

Back in the Late Forties, Early Fifties, Billy Cotton had a radio program "The Billy Cotton Band Show".

Part of it was an African theme, based on 'The Jungle Telegraph' with the tribes communicating with drums. He used this to provide social comment on, and to poke fun at, current news happenings.

His 'news' was chanted to a strong 'African' beat in a form that would easily be recognized today as Rap.

Example:
Down in the jungle
Read it in the press
have you heard the latest
Oh Yes!

Down in the jungle
Read it every day
you can hear the natives
All Say!

Down in the jungle
Living in a tent
Better than a prefab
No Rent!

Praise, you're right. Those are the ones I meant when I said 'The few that escape'. I'm glad to hear that a lot more are escaping. Keep up the good work.

Bert.

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: M. Ted (inactive)
Date: 16 Mar 00 - 12:45 PM

About 15 years ago, I used to listen to the rap show on Saturday afternoons on WHAT in Philadelphia, and there were some wonderful pieces they used to play--I don't remember the artists, but there was one about all the embarassing things that happened when he had dinner with someone else's family--in those days, rap was often just about the things that happened in people's lives--mostly witty, a bit racy at times--I wish I had paid more attention then--

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: Whistle Stop
Date: 16 Mar 00 - 01:40 PM

Sometimes what happens is that something doesn't exactly survive as a distinct form, but exerts its influence on other established forms, and lives on through them. Rap is doing this now to rock and roll, and may similarly end up influencing other musics before it has run its course; we may end up with some of the flavor of rap surviving even after the form itself has disappeared. In fact, if you listen to Ani DiFranco, you'll hear some of it now (and while Ani is not a traditional folkie either, her demographic overlaps with more traditional strains, and might end up influencing them). I'm not really a rap fan either, but there might be something in the rapid-spoken-word, rhyming-couplet thing that has value.

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 16 Mar 00 - 04:28 PM

Bert, I'm not looking for a fight, but we are not seeing the same paradigm AT ALL. No escaping was involved...

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: Osmium
Date: 16 Mar 00 - 04:37 PM

My sons tell me that "folk" is best epitomised by thinking about what people who go around singing;
All around my ARSE I will wear a green ribbon...
are singing the rest of the time? I don't know if this might help towards a clearer definition - they seem to think it's a pretty definitive statement.

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 16 Mar 00 - 04:54 PM

I agree!!!

Osmium for Wise Man!

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Mar 00 - 05:48 PM

"There are no sad or happy raps it seems to me but just angry ones" says Frank HGanmilton.

There are so - this one for example on a record by Four Men and a Dog called "Barking Mad.

I grant you that, insofar as it's an Irish folk band, it's not your typical rap, but I've heard happy rap often enough in the Notting Hill Carnival for example, though iot's not my music. "Sad rap" that isn't angry-sad - well I don't know about that. I suspect Frank might be rigfht there - but I don't know much about rap.

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 16 Mar 00 - 09:48 PM

I dont know much about RAP either, other than it puts me off, and much of it was/is intended to. However, though it is not sing alongable, it is often written about real issues, by actual people! It represents rebellion, "telling it like it is", and it rhymes with tight meter! Though it flys in the face of respectibility, it contains many elements that could be considered "folk", if you can stretch a bit;... conflict, politics, (attemts at) self realization, and lots of references to how it feels to be insignificant in the face of our techno-power based civilization. If we put ourselves into the position of being broke, young, disempowered, surrounded by guns, dependent upon expensive everything...(cars, housing, dining, concerts, computers, etc.), then we have a reality check for musical expression.

Now, I can't vouch for the art form, or the way it feels violent, mean, and pointless. However, it does describe the feelings of a generation, and this has historical meaning whether we like it or not.

Though I seldom hear RAP that I enjoy even remotely, it has got some of the elements of descriptive balladry, coupled with the same context that makes labor songs so meaningful...

I just dont like the art form,.... thats all! ttr