How old is a traditional song?

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: GUEST,Ard Mhacha
Date: 28 Feb 02 - 06:49 AM

Boab, I remember being taught at School Tom Moore`s " I saw from the Beach". Now, in and around my home town of Lurgan here in norh-east Ireland, I cannot imagine anyone at the various folk and traditional music sessions rendering this fine song. So poor oul Tom will still be "Far from the land" and sunk without trace. Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 27 Feb 02 - 12:55 PM

What some people here are saying is: "Traditional is what I say it is. Ignore dictionary definitions, I am a better authority."

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: GUEST,chanter
Date: 27 Feb 02 - 10:23 AM

Rossey I understand your point but how does that shed any light on the question posed within this thread. I too have had songs I composed used for a program by RTE. I wasn't contacted and asked permission nor given a mention,let alone being paid for my work.It happens, not only by folk musicians. Sure didn't Rod Stewart do it with the McPeak family a few years ago. Maybe a thread should be started on 'Copyright Vultures'

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: GUEST,rossey
Date: 27 Feb 02 - 10:02 AM

legally in the uk - a song falls into public domain 70 years after the death of the composer/author. 50 years was an outdated length as people usually now live longer. It is not 50 years or 70 years after the work was written. A work is copyrighted as soon as it appears in any fixed form, written down or taped. My own family have had works stolen by folk musicians who do not appreciate these technical points!

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: GUEST,Eoin O'Buadhaigh
Date: 27 Feb 02 - 09:17 AM

Maybe the answer to this thread can be summed up by two questions. 1.How long is a piece of rope? 2.Who gives a d#*m? Frankly my dear, I dont think anyone does! as long as we enjoy singing and listening to 'our' inteputation of traditonal songs. It wouldn't matter anyway, because there's always someone out there who will find fault with our choices. There is always someone who thinks they know best. My opinion, just sing and enjoy! (as long as it's traditional)

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: GUEST,chanter
Date: 27 Feb 02 - 09:08 AM

Hrothgar, just how old is the 'old' song you refer to?

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: Hrothgar
Date: 27 Feb 02 - 03:56 AM

This question will probably give a similar range of answers:

How traditional is an old song?

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 27 Feb 02 - 03:17 AM

Carol: mea culpa! I was thinking about one tradition, the British-American one (which also encompasses half a dozen or so easily identifiable traditions). Let us not go down the road of numberless sub-divisions! I suppose by The Tradition I mean one's own traditional milieu, if that doesn't sound silly; in the end, it's the thing itself that matters--whatever we think it is--and not the technical definition.

Steve

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: GUEST,Boab
Date: 27 Feb 02 - 01:36 AM

Ard Mhacha---A pile [a high pile~!] of years back, in a song circle at Girvan fest.,chaired by an ould Irish fella--sorry, can't name him---I came up with "I saw From the Beach" by Thomas Moore. Far from askance, or indifference, the ould Lad came to me and thanked me for the contribution, remarking that he hadn't heard it sung for a long time. So I wouldn't be too sure that Moore's songs aren't appreciated in "folk" circles. Boab

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 26 Feb 02 - 05:44 PM

Definition of a traditional song- an ancient, nameless, homeless wanderer.

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: CarolC
Date: 26 Feb 02 - 05:13 PM

I think we can (usually) easily distinguish between The Tradition and a tradition, and use each expression validly as long as we remember the distinction.

--Steve Parkes

I've been thinking about this one. I think, when a discussion is about more than one possible "tradition" (such as klezmer, or Yiddish culture in general, as opposed to, say, Acadian music or culture), it is necessary to refer to each as "a tradition". It is only possible to use the phrase "the tradition" when the discussion is about only one tradition.

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: GUEST,Eoin O'Buadhaigh
Date: 26 Feb 02 - 02:47 PM

A few (maybe 20)years ago I competed in the newly composed section at the All Ireland Fleadh. I wasn't placed as I composed it on a Napoleonic theme and not a modern one, but a few years later (maybe 10) I was listening to the mens senior singing competition and was surprised to hear my song being sung. The adjudicator (a singer of long standing and high regard) commented on the choice of songs of this singer and said (Quote) "This is a fine choice of traditional ballad" Later I pointed out to this adjudicator that I composed this ballad ten years earlier and he said, what is wrong with that? A traditional ballad does not have to be hundreds or even tens of years old to be traditional, it's the style and theme its composed and sung in. Hope this is of some help to the thread.

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: MMario
Date: 26 Feb 02 - 10:26 AM

In that case there are some people who would recognize very little as "traditional folk" because they ackknowledge only ONE version of a song to be correct.

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: greg stephens
Date: 26 Feb 02 - 10:18 AM

Here's my rule of thumb. You hear someone sing a song, and you notice something different in the words or tune from what you remember. If your next thought is "They've got it wrong" or " I've got it wrong" its not a traditional folk song. If your thought is "that's an interesting version" then it is traditional. Nothing to do with age, it's how you feel about it.

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: CarolC
Date: 26 Feb 02 - 09:58 AM

Just as it is dangerous to presume that the "first publication" date is necessarily tied to creation of a work, it is (I think) similarly dangerous to presume that "broadsides" were ever the sole means of transmission of a song.

--paddymac

This is an interesting point. And it leads me to ask this question: is it ever possible to prove whether or not any song or piece of music has been transmitted solely by either aural or written means. I would submit that it is not.

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: GUEST,Whistle Stop
Date: 26 Feb 02 - 09:05 AM

Checking into the forum after an extended absence. I like CarolC's definition, that the tradition may be active even if the specific tune is of more recent vintage. This definition is more meaningful to me than the more rigid definitions that are based on our educated guesses about how a specific tune may have been transmitted in the past.

As long as we're quoting Webster's (a more common reference for Americans than the OED), and as long as we acknowledge that this thread has some bearing on the whole "what is folk?" issue, there are a couple of other definitions worth noting:

folk (adjective, secondary definition): being a form of contemporary music written in imitation of and having qualities of traditional folk music such as stanzaic form, refrain, and simplicity of melody

folksinger: one who sings folk songs or sings in a style associated with folk songs

To futher muddy the waters, I think that in other fields there is some recognition that the pace of change in the modern world is much more rapid than in olden times. It seems to me that, when everything else goes faster, the factors that distinguish one "generation" from the next also change more quickly. So to me it seems reasonable that the development of traditions also happens more quickly in the modern world.

None of this does much for Bill D in his quest to have fixed definitions for the words we use, but I think that is a losing battle anyway.

I will now crawl back under my stone.

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: Irish sergeant
Date: 25 Feb 02 - 03:41 PM

By the way, thanks for an intellectuallu stimulating discussion everyone! Irish Sergeant

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 25 Feb 02 - 11:54 AM

I wasn't being quite facetious, Bill! When I was young and foolish, I thought (when I thought of it at all) that traditional songs must be like "Greensleeves", hundreds of years old and with origins lost in the mists of time; but then I used to think of WWII in the same way, even though I was born only a few years after it ended. When I began to take a proper interest in traditional songs, I began to think that the words didn't look much like Art poetry from the 16-17th centuries, but might have matched the sort of stilted English common in early 19th century music hall songs. But if "rustic" or naïf song-makers used these stilted forms as a kind of formal English style rather than because it was fashionable (and this seems to me to be more likely), then it is not a reliable indicator of age. Songs that don't overtly identify any particular historical period are going to be difficult, if not impossible, to date, however approximately, unless some external form of provenance can be found. I guess it was a silly question, but is it possible to say with any justification, that most of the traditional songs we sing today are from, say, before the Industrial Revolution; or that they have their origins spread more-or-less evenly over,say, the 17-19th centuries?

Steve

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: GUEST,Bill Kennedy
Date: 25 Feb 02 - 11:26 AM

ITMA has a definition and 15 points that distinguish traditional from folk or ballad, liook in Vallely's 'Companion' I guess I think Steve was being a bit facetious in asking the question, individual traditional songs &r tunes are various ages, and though many would balk at including Tom Moore's songs, the airs he used everyone plays and they are, often, traditional. Has Yankee Doodle become a traditional song and the originally composed version it replaced is just an old song that noone sings anymore?

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 25 Feb 02 - 10:56 AM

I think we can (usually) easily distinguish between The Tradition and a tradition, and use each expression validly as long as we remember the distinction. Many years ago, it became a tradition at the Songsmiths Folk Club for us to sing "On the road to Mandalay" as the last song of the night; it certainly isn't a traditional song! Of course, tradition--and The Tradition in particular--is a living thing, not a dead stuffed-and-mounted-in-a-glass-case-in-a-museum thing, and we keep it alive by hands-on enjoyment of it, not by displaying it and saying "don't touch!"; and we add to it as we go along, so that our children's Tradition will be a little different from ours, as ours is from our parents'.

Gosh, I'm getting all philosophical! I'd better go and lie down ...

Steve

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: paddymac
Date: 25 Feb 02 - 06:45 AM

CarolC - Just as it is dangerous to presume that the "first publication" date is necessarily tied to creation of a work, it is (I think) similarly dangerous to presume that "broadsides" were ever the sole means of transmission of a song. Publishing and copright not being then what they are now, publishers (maybe "printers" would be more accurate) were apt to print songs that were popular at the time. Whether they were "original works" probably wasn't a big part of the equation.

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: ard mhacha
Date: 25 Feb 02 - 06:17 AM

To-day is the 150th anniversary of the death of the Poet Thomas Moore. Now if anyone at an Irish musican session got to their feet and began singing any of Moore`s melodies, he would get some queer looks. And the man works covered all aspects of life.Can any of you learned fraternity explain. Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: CarolC
Date: 25 Feb 02 - 04:37 AM

Here's a whacky alternative sort of way we can look at what constitutes "traditional" music. It's probably a little too kooky for most people to feel comfortable with, but I like it, so I'm posting it...

My Mirriam Webster's (admittedly not as elegant as the OED, but it's the one I've got) says with regard to the transmission of culture and knowlege:

tradition : the handing down of information, beliefs, and customs by word of mouth or by example from one generation to another without written instruction.

Now, what I want to know is this: who says the information and or customs that are being handed down have to be the individual songs or pieces themselves? Maybe the tradition isn't the song itself, but instead, it is the tradtional elements of a particular type of song or tune. So in that case, a song that is written recently, but that uses the elements of a particular tradition with regard to how such a song or tune is put together, would be considered a traditional song or tune.

This is certainly in keeping with what my friend told me about klezmer music, which is a tradition of making a particular kind of music. He said that a student of klezmer is discouraged from using printed music, and is encouraged to learn the feel of the music and of how the music is created, in order to be able to play it in the way it is traditionally played. And traditionally, klezmer involves a lot of improvisation. So when played in the traditional way, klezmer is always a new composition and each player makes it his or her own.

By using what seem like the most commonly articulated standards, of the piece itself being handed down, or the standards that the piece itself has to be old, or even just the idea that there has to be an entity that is recognizable as a particular song or piece with a name like maybe "Song for my Wooden Flute", maybe we're missing the point altogether. The point being that it's the tradition of the way the music is put together that makes it a part of a tradition rather than a particular song or tune being what constitutes a tradition.

And when looked at in that light, all those new songs or tunes that sound so convincingly like one particular tradition or another actually are traditional because the way they were created is in keeping with the tradition for that kind of music.

I like this definition so much, I think I'm going to adopt it as my own unless someone can give me a convincing reason why this should not be so.

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 25 Feb 02 - 03:50 AM

The definition of "traditional" we used to use to avoid fisticuffs was that the song had to have undergone oral transmission and become changed in the process; so "We all live in a yellow submarine" is not trad, but the football chant "We all live at the Hilary Street end" is. "Anon" simply means we don;t know who wrote it, which is a subtly but significant difference.

Just to complicate matters, we know that, for example, Robert Burns collected trad songs and "cleaned them up" for publication under his own name. I suppose that "improvement" by Anon makes something trad...?

BTW, what I wondered way back at the start of this thread was: what's the average (mode, not mean!) of songs we think of as traditional "old" songs when we sing them in public?

Steve

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: GUEST,lil' VanBone
Date: 25 Feb 02 - 01:15 AM

It seems to me that no matter what we decide traditional means here, it will continue to be used in a variety of fashions everywhere which will not specifically mean whatever we define here. What we are all attempting to create is an operational defination without any operation in mind. Why not create a new word for any meanings which might be significant, because as it is used, Traditional is used in so many ways that it is too ambiguous to use as a technical term. If I have an event 3 years in a row, I call it a new tradition. If you want a technical term, make one up. How about "Legso" defined as "Any song regularly passed through the oral tradition" and "Advanced Legso" as "Any song passed through the oral tradition for over 50 years" and perhaps "Modern Legso" for anything over a few hundred years old and "Classic Legso" as anything over 1000 years.

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: CarolC
Date: 25 Feb 02 - 01:09 AM

Oops. Hit "send" too soon...

So by the "aural tradition" criteria of trad./folk music, a song like that one doesn't qualify. Or so it seems to me.

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: CarolC
Date: 25 Feb 02 - 12:54 AM

But here's where that example points to another aspect of this kind of discussion. One of the criteria that gets repeatedly listed in order for a piece of music and/or a song to be traditional (folk) is that it has to be passed on aurally. In the case of paddymac's example, the song was being passed on in printed form ("as a printed street ballad").

So by the "aural tradition" of trad./folk music, a song doesn't qualify. Or so it seems to me.

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: paddymac
Date: 25 Feb 02 - 12:12 AM

A case in point might be "Fields of Athenry." If I could do blue clickies, I'd link to earlier threads about it, but the essence of the story is that the song, which most people think was written by Pete St John actually dates back to the 1880s when it appeared as a printed steet ballad in Dublin. As best I recall, St' John's melody is the same, but he did change the wording in the chorus. His "arrangement" is his, but the song is trad.

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: GUEST,Boab
Date: 24 Feb 02 - 11:10 PM

When our bunch do gigs for pay, we label songs or melodies "traditional" when they are such that no copyright can be claimed on them. Some would have it that they must not have a known author, but if that was so much of the popular Burns material couldn't be called "traditional"--and to me that is patently nonsense. In the truest sense of the word, as has been said already, "traditional" means the passing of the material from generation to generatio; in other words, folk-memory.

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: Bill D
Date: 24 Feb 02 - 06:26 PM

Malcolm..those italics, "in its present form", are the best way I have seen so far to approach the issue! Thank you. It is a way of looking at it that I never quite managed to say properly before, and it clarifies things and helps ME with my own understanding.

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 24 Feb 02 - 12:24 PM

Quite a lot of traditional songs and dance tunes derive originally from popular, composed pieces of the 18th and 19th centuries, and often began their lives on the stage.  We have resources now which were not available to the collectors of the early 20th century, and in some cases it can be relatively easy to trace a song to its origin.  The original, composed version is neither "folk" nor "traditional", but its descendants, living in the wild, so to speak, don't lose their "folk" status just because we now know their antecedents.

Back in 1890, Sabine Baring Gould pointed out that The Sweet Nightingale was written by Isaac Bickerstaff for a "dramatic pastoral", Thomas and Sally, or The Sailor's Return, first performed at Covent Garden, London, on 28th November 1760.  It was set to music by Thomas Arne, but by the time folk-song collectors started to come across it, it was sung to a completely different melody, and in many cases had developed a divergent story-line.  It had become a folk song.  The original versions of The Famous Flower of Serving Men and James Harris were written by one Laurence Price;  Bruce Olson's website  contains a great deal of information on early (sometimes original) examples of songs that entered tradition and in many cases mutated almost beyond recognition.  The well-known slip-jig Barney Brallaghan started out in the late 1820s as a stage song, (words by T. Hudson and music by J. Blewitt); the list is long, but the point is that it is what happens to a song or tune, not where it came from, that determines whether or not it can be reasonably considered in its present form to be traditional.

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: pavane
Date: 24 Feb 02 - 06:43 AM

Does what is formerly regarded as a 'folk' song suddenly lose that status if research identifies a composer?

Example: My Johnny was a Shoemaker - many people think of it as a folk song, but it was apparently written in America in the 1850's - a copy of song is in the Lester Levy collection with the composer's name.

Unless someone finds an earlier version, of course...

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: Pied Piper
Date: 23 Feb 02 - 07:38 AM

Tunes don't like bounderies,the little buggers will sneak out of one tradition into another without taking account of human catigories.Some like to travel in disguise put on foriegn accents or live in books, Hell, they even squot in computer hard drives and floppy discs.

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: bradfordian
Date: 23 Feb 02 - 06:04 AM

Every song must have had an author at its origin. It's just that the power of the song becomes greater than its association with the author, which in time gets overlooked as it is passed on. Consider John Connelly's Fiddlers Green; I have heard several references to this being a traditional song. Obviously it's a great song. It means of course that the author no longer receives any credit for its creation (financial or otherwise). Maybe others like Rare Ould Times or When We Go Rolling Home may quickly become "trad". It depends on how long we hang on to the authors name when executing the oral tradition.

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: CarolC
Date: 23 Feb 02 - 05:08 AM

I have a houseguest right now. One of my old high school friends with whom I used to play early music in my younger days. We've been talking about music a lot since he got here. He plays a lot of different kinds of music these days. He plays Klezmer on a wooden flute. He says that Klezmer is a form of traditional music that can be traced back at least as far as the 1600s.

He also plays some kinds of French folk (traditional) music on the hurdy gurdy. He played one of the pieces for me, and I told him I thought it sounded very much like something from the renaissance period. He said that some kinds of French folk music do sound very much like renaissance music.

With the early music sub-category of classical music, pieces (and/or songs) are assumed to have had an author or composer, but if the name of that person is not known, it is attributed as "anonymous". Does the fact that the author isn't known make it folk music? Maybe not if it was passed down through the use of sheet music. However, as in the case of the piece mentioned in my previous post, sometimes these pieces "escape cultivation" and start being passed along without the use of sheet music and become known as "traditional" in some circles, while still being regarded as "art" music in other circles.

I don't know. The more I see people trying to gategorize things, the more things I see that defy categorization.

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: Les Jones
Date: 23 Feb 02 - 03:01 AM

I think we used to call them folk songs but people who sang folk songs ended up singing anything, so some other people used the word 'traditional' to label songs that were mostly (1) old, (2) anonymous (3) passed through an oral rather than a written tradition, (4) changed through time. Not all 4 are always proven or in equal measure but these criteria do identify songs & music that are different from Art music which is usually the opposite.

Traditional stuff does usually sound different. Its strange emotional affect is often enhanced when sung or played by someone who has learned the song from within that oral tradition. It affects us in some emotional way that Art music does not. Not better, not worse but different.

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: greg stephens
Date: 23 Feb 02 - 12:02 AM

well, i'd pretty much go along with that, except what happens when you find out a tune everybody thought was by Carolan turns out not to be, because someone's dug up an earlier version? doesn't that screw that argument up a bit?

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 22 Feb 02 - 11:57 PM

Some of us are stretching the concept of traditional like it is a latex girdle. The Irish sergeant is closest to the meaning with his interpretation. A tradition is something handed down. It has no real author, set time or definite place of origin. If it is by Beethoven or O'Carolan, Dylan or Guthrie, it is not traditional. Ignorance of the origin is no excuse.

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 22 Feb 02 - 09:10 PM

Bill, I guess I was saying that, in a nutshell, it has to go through the process, or a variation thereof, called the oral tradition.

Art

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: Bill D
Date: 22 Feb 02 - 08:14 PM

awww...Art!....a few years ago, when I was young sprout of 58, I might have typed a 500 word rebuttal to that ...but now, all I can muster is 'pooh'...*grin*...if THAT'S all it takes, it removes any requirement for 'general acceptance'and waters down the meaning.

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 22 Feb 02 - 07:08 PM

Good question.

Answer:-------If a person writes a song and sings it for another person without naming the author/composer --- and that person sings it for someone else with no info changing hands and no bother at all with any copyrights of any kind at all, even if only ten minutes has crept by on the clock, it is a full-blown traditional song.

ART THIEME

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: Irish sergeant
Date: 22 Feb 02 - 03:47 PM

Boy, you could really open a can of worms with this thread. As a writer, I list a song as Traditional if after research I can find no known author/composer. How accurate is that? Don't know. It works. How old is Traditional music. Yesterday. Allow me to explain. The song "Dixie's Land' is well over fifty years old but Daniel Emmett wrote it so He gets the credit in my Civil War song book. "The MAcNamara Line" from the Vietnam war has no known author that I have found so although it is probably still withing copyright range, I consider it traditional. By the way, if anyone has the full lyrics to the song I would appreciate it if they would post them or pm them to me. I know the first verse goes "The MacNamara line is a hundred miles long/ It's completely surrounded by Viet-Cong/ I'm moving on.." It is song to the tune of the old Dave Dudley song "Moving On"> Thanks and Kindest regards, neil

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: M.Ted
Date: 22 Feb 02 - 03:43 PM

"Traditional" means that it has been passed from one generation to the next--

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: Amergin
Date: 22 Feb 02 - 02:08 PM

I went to see a Tom Paxton show a few weeks ago and he was telling us a story about when his daughter was going to university in Scotland....she and her friends were at the pub one evening and a Scottish performer was there on the stage singing "Last Thing On My Mind"....She goes up to him and thanks him for playing it, saying, "My dad wrote that song."

The performer says, "No he didn't, it is an old Scottish folk song."

"Yes he did", she responds.

The musician leans back and thinks for a moment and asks, "What is your dad's name?"

"Tom Paxton", she says.

""Hmmm, he may have written it."

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: Bill D
Date: 22 Feb 02 - 01:52 PM

please understand..*smile*,,,I'm not trying to put anyone down. But the question was asked "How old is a trad song", and I'm speaking toward how it might be approached so as to have SOME general understanding and agreement....it is not crucial that is be '50 years' or be known by 67.215% of all singers...just that there is 'some' sense that a song can't be called 'folk', 'trad', or 'classic' simply beacuse it sells a million copies or is a cult favorite of some group.

That's why Alice was bemused by Humpty-Dumpty's attempt to over work his words...(He did say he paid them overtime when he made them do extra duty..*grin*)

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: Bill D
Date: 22 Feb 02 - 01:43 PM

*sigh*...but that still misses my point. That makes it 'traditional' to ONE group of people in ONE context. It would not truly be 'traditional' in a larger sense unless it were sung throughout the English speaking world in MUSIC circles and situations.

If my local church started singing "Tiptoe Thru the Tulips" at every barbecue, that makes IT sort of 'traditional'...but not to the English Football clubs!

the word 'traditional' is being used in an way that doesn't mean the same...although it is similar.

A silly, nit-picking point?...not if you want to settle an issue, instead of just complicating it..*shrug*

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 22 Feb 02 - 01:07 PM

Surely the thing that makes a song traditional is not its source but its use.

"You'll Never Walk Alone" was was written by Rodgers & Hammerstein in 1945 for Carousel but has become a traditional song of English football after Liverpool supporters adopted it.

Nobody said they had to ..... nobody organised it ..... it just happened ..... how much more traditional can you get ?

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: Bill D
Date: 22 Feb 02 - 12:30 PM

antiques and classic autos and such have pretty tight rules about how old something has to be to be technically 'old'....music, by it's nature depends on subjective feelings.

Tune in to some 'oldies' radio station be startled at what they are playing!...5 years seems to be ancient to some people.

Subjectively, I just treat a song as 'folk/trad' if it is at least 50 years old, and is showing up through the oral tradition done by people who don't know the author...even if the author CAN be easily found.

NOTE: this does NOT mean I don't sing the song or like the song or that I don't EXPECT the song will become a classic!!!! It is purely a test. Yes, I DO suppose that many Dylan songs will get there eventually, just as many Woody Guthrie songs have.

It is just my stubborn idea that a word had to mean something, or it is largely useless. "Old" and "folk" and "trad" are no better than "cool" or "gross" if they have meaning only in context to a particular group or one's self.

------------------------------------------------------ "I don't know what you mean by `glory,' " Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't--till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"

"But `glory' doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument," Alice objected.

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less.

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master--that's all."

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: GUEST,JohnB
Date: 22 Feb 02 - 12:08 PM

I don't think Trad songs are as old as the one's written by Anon. JohnB

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 22 Feb 02 - 10:22 AM

Well, to be really, really pedantic, and without wishing to detract from or denigrate any of the answers so far posted, the question of the thread is "How old is a traditional song?". I'm perfectly happy to accept "any song or tune believed (rightly or wrongly) to be traditional by the listener or performer" as a definition of "traditional"--we can avoid a rigourous definition and so remain friends!

Steve