What, if anything, is a ballad?

Subject: What, if anything, is a ballad?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 10 Mar 03 - 12:57 PM

I steal my title from Stephen Jay Gould's What if Anything is a Zebra, which is a discussion of whether the genetic relationship between zebras was closer than that between any particular zebra and horses. If so, then there was a genetic group (clade) called Zebras; if not, then zebras were just striped varieties of horses. There is no such thing as an ape, for example, that includes all the non-hominids and excludes us. But I digress.

Out in the face world I was having a discussion fine-tuning the definition of "ballad" which reminded me of , which is too long to be updated but is well worth re-reading.

So, is a ballad really a song that tells a story - a "narrative" poem set to a singable tune? Or...

Subject: RE: What, if anything, is a ballad?
From: Leadfingers
Date: 10 Mar 03 - 01:26 PM

Some friends of mine were running a Ballad Session at a festival and asked me if I would be turning up.When i replied that I didnt 'do'
ballads ,they said ANY song tha tells a story qualified as a ballad in their view. Traditionally the ballad is a particular construction of narrative song,and bears NO relation to what the Pop/Rock world
calls a ballad.

Subject: RE: What, if anything, is a ballad?
From: Noreen
Date: 10 Mar 03 - 01:43 PM

You mean this thread?
Why not put 'ballad' into the forum search and find many earlier discussions of your question.
eg The most beautiful gaelic ballads? which, despite the unpleasant attitude of one of the contributors, was a useful thread.

Subject: RE: What, if anything, is a ballad?
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Mar 03 - 01:52 PM

Thanks Noreen, indeed I did!

Subject: RE: What, if anything, is a ballad?
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 10 Mar 03 - 02:58 PM

Ain't no simple, all-encompassing answer. Once upon a time, it meant a tune that could be danced to. Later, it was a narrative, sung or recited. Some people think it needs a melody to qualify. Nowadys, it's any slow song.

You pretty much have to pick a definition before you can discuss it. Sort of like "folk" or "traditional"

Subject: RE: What, if anything, is a ballad?
From: sharyn
Date: 10 Mar 03 - 03:20 PM

If you want to talk about what a traditional ballad is, I can go on about that for awhile. As Dick said, if you clarify what sort of ballad you wish to discuss we'll all jump in.

Subject: RE: What, if anything, is a ballad?
From: GUEST,Martin Ryan
Date: 10 Mar 03 - 04:09 PM

A few years ago, while introducing a song, I remarked:
"If a ballad is a song that tells a story, then maybe a good ballad is a song that doesn't tell you the whole story.....". I was only half joking, of course.

The word has lots of meanings, depending on the context. Attempting to pin it down without a context is rarely satisfying or illuminating, I'm afraid.

Regards

Subject: RE: What, if anything, is a ballad?
From: SINSULL
Date: 10 Mar 03 - 05:30 PM

Actually GUEST, Martin, I took a 60s course in FOLK MUSIC where a ballad was defined as a song which told a story but left out critical bits of information. Then we flailed Barbara Allen to death with "Why 'be kind to Barbara Allen'"? Did she kill him and it is a warning? Did he love her and truly want her to be looked after? Can't believe I earned college credits for it but...

Now that I think about it, if I can find my notes I must have the definitive answer to "What is folk music?" somewhere in my attic.

Subject: RE: What, if anything, is a ballad?
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 10 Mar 03 - 06:17 PM

People define "ballad" to suit themselves. The word comes from old Provencal, balada (Late Latin ballare, to dance), a song sung while dancing. It has accumulated several meanings. The principal meaning now is a narrative composition in rhythmic verse suitable for singing.

Its primary meaning is a song intended as the accompaniment to a dance. OED. The secondary definition is "a light, simple song of any kind but it has come to mean a sentimental or romantic composition in verses." OED
Its present meaning is nebulous. Martin Ryan's comments are pertinent.

Subject: RE: What, if anything, is a ballad?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 10 Mar 03 - 08:38 PM

Take a look at this quote from the Traditional Ballad Index:

The Ballad Index uses a loose definition of a ballad. The definition I'm working from is "A traditional song in which something happens." (Before you object, by the way, we took a survey, and the majority of those who answered preferred not to use a restrictive definition of a ballad.) I don't claim this is the "correct" or "ideal" definition of a ballad -- but it has the advantage that anyone can apply it and not get into arguments. If we're in doubt (for instance, if we're dealing with what looks like a fragment of a longer song), we include it.

I suppose the definition depends a great deal on the purpose of your definition, rather than on the essence of what you're defining. The ballad index definition deals with the question of what to include, and their generous inclusion is quite broad. A ballad workshop might want to have a much narrower definition.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: What, if anything, is a ballad?
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 10 Mar 03 - 09:50 PM

You can dance to Achey Breaky Heart or Hound Dog but they ain't no ballads!
A ballad must tell a story or at least impart a moral point!
            Sandy

Subject: RE: What, if anything, is a ballad?
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 11 Mar 03 - 01:31 AM

Joe's definition- leaving out one word- becomes "a song in which something happens." Traditional implies age, unknown author, change, etc., which means a person can't sit down today, write a song, and call it a ballad.
Leave out the traditional, and the definition might be workable.
Dictionaries, however, allow broader definitions.
Sandy McLean perhaps asks too much. "You Ain't Nothin' but a Hound Dog" certainly imparts a message. "Cryin' all the time" and other lines show something is happening. Is it or ain't it a ballad?

The Oxford Dictionary lists this definition first:
1. A song intended as the accompaniment to a dance; the tune to which the song is sung. The original meaning, but now obsolete in their view.
2. A light simple song of any kind, now specifically a sentimental or romantic composition....the musical accompaniment being strictly subordinate to the air.
3. A popular song; often one specifically celebrating or....attacking persons or institutions....Often printed as a broadsheet. Obsolete [Not to many of us- only to the general public is this meaning obsolete].
4. A proverbial saying. Obsolete.
5. A simple spirited poem in short stanzas, originally a ballad in sense 3 in which some popular story is graphically narrated. ("This sense is essentially modern; with Milton, Addison, Johnson, the idea of song was present").
The word has been used as a verb, but now more or less obsolete ("to ballad").

From this, we see that the sense of a story or a song with a moral point (Sandy McLean, above) is a modern one. The word started out meaning a song accompanying a dance, so there has been a shift in meaning.

Perhaps Joe's definition (leaving out the word traditional) is as good as any. I see so much overlap, however, with anything with words, that I am happy with simple "song."

Subject: RE: What, if anything, is a ballad?
From: Hrothgar
Date: 11 Mar 03 - 05:43 AM

And horses don't sing them.

Subject: RE: What, if anything, is a ballad?
From: Deni-C
Date: 11 Mar 03 - 05:48 AM

Sorry to go off the subject, but I'm still laughing over what someone in another thread called a 'bad salad'. I bet it's an old joke but it was a new one on me.

D

Subject: RE: What, if anything, is a ballad?
From: GUEST,Martin Ryan
Date: 11 Mar 03 - 06:02 AM

SINSULL

Of course! The "gapped narrative" and the shifting perspective are classic features of traditional ballads. I think what I was getting at was that sometimes a little of the same untidiness wouldn't go amiss in some of our more direct modern songs in a traditional idiom.

Anyway, I'm in danger of mounting a hobby horse....

Regards

Subject: RE: What, if anything, is a ballad?
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 11 Mar 03 - 06:06 AM

Of course, the two definitions above are somewhat contradictory.
1. A song intended as the accompaniment to a dance; the tune to which the song is sung
2. a narrative composition in rhythmic verse suitable for singing.

If the song tells a story then dancing to the music will make it difficult to listen to. So I feel the original meaning (and derivation) have (for most people) become obsolete.

Nigel

Subject: RE: What, if anything, is a ballad?
From: greg stephens
Date: 11 Mar 03 - 08:27 AM

Words with many contradictory meanings are no problem, as long s people using the words know which meaning applies to the subect under discussion."Over the Rainbow" has a clssic ballad structure,32 bars with an AABA format(B being the middle 8). "Chevy Chase" has a classic ballad structure, four line verses, 2 and 4 rhyming, with 4.3.4.3 feet per line. Both perfectly useful and well understood statements. No probs. Unlike the word"folk", whose various menaings do cause serious problems here and elsewhere!

Subject: RE: What, if anything, is a ballad?
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 11 Mar 03 - 11:31 AM

"Ballad" has a number of legitimate meanings different enought to cause confusion. At any ballad workshop there's always someone who thinks "Ode to Billy Joe" is an appropriate contribution.

I usually avoid the word. I'll say that I sing "old" ballads, or "traditional" ballads, or "Child" ballads.

Subject: RE: What, if anything, is a ballad?
From: Peterr
Date: 11 Mar 03 - 12:07 PM

A friend of mine mentioned that he had heard that Bert Lloyd reckoned that there was no 'trad anon' English (as opposed to Irish or Scottish) ballad that had anything about the supernatural in it. I thought about that idea, and I suggested 'King Henry' but my friend said, Scottish origin. Could be claimed for any ballad to make the point, I suppose, but an interesting point. Can anyone come up with some more English ghost ballads (apart from night visiting songs)?
By ballad I would mean narrative verse set to a tune, but it's very difficult to define. Good ballad singers make you listen to the story while using the often very plain tune almost as a rhythm device rather than a carrier for the story. Great example a few months ago, when a trio playing as background music in our local brought the bar to near silence with 'Mattie Groves' at ten minutes to closing time.

Subject: RE: What, if anything, is a ballad?
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 11 Mar 03 - 12:49 PM

Off the top of my head (there are plenty more, though by no means all in the Child canon): The Yarmouth Tragedy; The Cruel Ship's Carpenter; The Suffolk Miracle.

The House Carpenter/Demon Lover is English in origin, come to that, as is The Sailor's Tragedy/The Ghost So Grim.

Subject: RE: What, if anything, is a ballad?
From: Mary Humphreys
Date: 11 Mar 03 - 01:02 PM

Peterr asked for English ghost ballads : here are two for starters.
The Unquiet Grave ( child Number 78) - all versions I know have 'the ghost did rise to speak' to his true love who was mourning on his grave for 12 months and a day.
'Flame of Fire' - although not a Child Ballad was collected by Cecil Sharp from Mrs Betsy Pike in Somerton, Somerset in 1906. It has a musrdered lover coming back to haunt and kill her sailor murderer.

Subject: RE: What, if anything, is a ballad?
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Mar 03 - 04:03 PM

Stanley Edgar Hyman stated in 1951 that "...the (Child) ballad...is of ancient anonymous collective origin. It derives from a ritual, of which it is the dramatic text...presumably sung by a narrator, while the actor-dancers pantomime the action. When the ritual dies out, the dramatic song continues .. it never derives from a historical incident, although part of the "identification" process of later singers is to tack on historical names and references."

He also says, "If the ballads originate out of rite, at a stage in antiquity we can reconstruct from survivals in the texts--a matrilineal, totemic, hunting society of great primitiveness--then no ballads can arise later, when these conditions can no longer obtain, although old ones may be vastly transformed to fit new conditions...the ballad is ritual in origin, dramatic in structure, and magical in function."

Believing this, I discourage the mixing of broadsides and songs of modern creation in with the traditional ballads we sing at many San Francisco Bay Area workshops and gatherings. I attempt to demystify the Scottish dialects basic to many of the Child ballads, in workshops and performances, by describing the action and clarifying some of the vocabulary, which modern singers are not encouraged to puzzle out on their own as a form of English.

I believe that any looser definition of a ballad, embracing any sad or narrative or dramatic song, possibly with "critical bits of information left out," or simply structured in its lyric rhyme scheme, whether old or new, does a disservice to the scholarly understanding of the ballads as true antiques, functional gifts from pre-history, almost untouched glimpses into ancient collective thought.

Their origins as dramatic ritual descriptions--of sacrificial killings and escapes, seasonal combats, Year-King rites, parts of the Persephone and the Green Knight myths, marriage combats, rites of magical transformation, initiation/rebirth rites--and their wonderful preservation as some of the greatest poetry in English, separate them and put them above all modern, even mythic songwriting.

Subject: RE: What, if anything, is a ballad?
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 11 Mar 03 - 04:40 PM

"Scholarly understanding of the ballads as true antiques, functional gifts from pre-history, almost untouched glimpses into ancient collective thought."
Well dash my buttons!

Subject: RE: What, if anything, is a ballad?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Mar 03 - 07:14 PM

"Traditional implies age, unknown author, change..."

I'd disagree there - traditional can equally imply something that is composed today in a living tradition, and I'd say, by someone who is living in that tradition.

Extended narrative songs occur in all sorts of traditions around the world, some of which are very much alive. Whether the term ballad is used to include all these, or whether it should be more especially applied to the ballads from the tradition catalogued by Child, is a matter of choice.

Does the Oddyssey count as a ballad?

Subject: RE: What, if anything, is a ballad?
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 11 Mar 03 - 07:33 PM

Perhaps. We don't know if it was ever sung, but it may well have been, in some form or other. The romantic ideas Stanley Edgar Hyman wrote of were popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but were becoming outdated by the time he wrote the above, and have largely been superceded by more recent scholarship.

Subject: RE: What, if anything, is a ballad?
From: Burke
Date: 11 Mar 03 - 08:07 PM

Here's what GroveMusic has as a definition:
Ballad
(from Lat. ballare: 'to dance').
Term used for a short popular song that may contain a narrative element. Scholars take it to signify a relatively concise composition known throughout Europe since the late Middle Ages: it combines narrative, dramatic dialogue and lyrical passages in stanzaic form sung to a rounded tune, and often includes a recurrent refrain. Originally the word referred to dance-songs such as the carole, but by the 14th century it had lost that connotation in English and had become a distinctive song type with a narrative core. The word has sometimes been used, mistakenly, as a translation for the medieval French forme fixe ballade, and for the 18th- and 19th-century German ballade; the latter was partly influenced by the narrative strophic folksong tradition of Britain and Scandinavia.

The 'ballad opera', a satirical form of theatrical entertainment based on spoken dialogue and popular tunes of the day, was fashionable for several decades during the early to mid-18th century. Literary ballads which imitated the traditional ballad marked a significant phase of influence during the Romantic period. In the 19th century 'ballad' came to denote a sentimental song cultivated by the middle classes in Britain and North America, while in 20th-century popular culture it has come to refer to a slow, personalized love song or one, such as the 'blues ballad' in North America, in which the narrative element is slender and subordinated to a lyrical mood.

Porter, James: 'Ballad', The New Grove Dictionary of Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 11 Mar. 2003),

Subject: RE: What, if anything, is a ballad?
From: vlmagee
Date: 12 Mar 03 - 07:19 AM

Long ago I found this web page about the ballad:

http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/ballad.html

Follow the link to "Ballad Stanza" as well. You'll find that many favorite "folk" songs do fit this definition and it explains why some songs "sound like" other songs - because they are written in this pattern or something very close to it. Combine that with "telling a story" and you will come up with many favorite "folk" tunes.

Subject: RE: What, if anything, is a ballad?
From: sadie damascus
Date: 16 Mar 03 - 02:00 PM

I suppose what I meant was that, as we now use the Greek-derived word "Bible" to refer to, not any book, bbut mainly the one collection of Judeo-Christian prophecy and law and narrative, we should perhaps use the word "Ballad" only to refer to those noble old songs Child and others collected, and which in their parity and depth will not be imitated successfully.

Surely there are other words we can use for sad songs, story songs, Robert Service poems, and the like....?

Subject: RE: What, if anything, is a ballad?
From: toadfrog
Date: 16 Mar 03 - 04:17 PM

By golly, it depends a lot on the context.
1. Old Man River is usually described as a "ballad," by jazz fans, in any case. Many show tunes are so described.
2. A Man You Don't Meet Every Day is described (in innumerable on-line sites) as an "Irish Ballad." So is the Bard of Armagh It may be somehow arguable that these songs "tell a story," but they are not "narratives," let alone "gapped narratives." Maybe "ballad" means a "song that takes a long time to sing," or "a song that isn't a dance tune," or a "song that isn't purely lyrical"?
3. If a ballad is a gapped narrative, is a ballad fragment a "narrative with additional gaps"?
4. Do we really need a definition of "ballad"? In other words, do we need to use this particular word more precisely than the way it is generally used? Does a definition add to our understanding of anything in particular? Anyone who wants to start a ballad singing group, or cut a ballad disk, can think of his/her own definition.
5. I say, ballads are like hard-core pornography. I can't say what they are, but I know them when i hear them. To paraphrase whatshisname.

Subject: RE: What, if anything, is a ballad?
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 16 Mar 03 - 08:44 PM

Certainly, some are gapped, but many are pretty damn complete. Where's the gap in Golden Vanity? or Keach in the Creel? or Captain Wedderburn?