Who Defines 'Folk'????

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Goose Gander
Date: 09 Sep 09 - 03:37 PM

"It's one of those instances where the folk revival as a branch of British post-war socialism is out of kilter with much of the rest of the world, though that gap is narrowing all the time."

This is the specific statement of yours that I would like you to explain and back up with specific examples, and then (please!) relate it to the topic of this thread.

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: glueman
Date: 09 Sep 09 - 04:14 PM

Shimrod this'll come as a shock but it isn't always about you. You have form on taking any comment I make and saying 'where did I say that?' I know you believe your regular session at the Finger and Tankard make you identify so closely with The Tradition that you believe the two are inseparable but it isn't so.

MM, rather than submit to the delights of prove it or take your punishment schoolmasterlyness I put it to you in all seriousness, do you not believe the English folk music scene since WW2, by which I mean the club scene, has emerged alongside and interwoven with the political left? Furthermore, can you not see evidence that the right are appropriating the music as they have elsewhere?

If you don't I won't ask to provide evidence as marshalling the discussion either way would take great effort but I believed it to be a self-evident truth.

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Goose Gander
Date: 09 Sep 09 - 04:38 PM

GM, you equated folk with belligerent nationalism. I pointed out that folk in the UK is more often associated with left-wing politics and looks askance at such things. Have you forgotten this? Maybe you should go back and read my brief posts. You went on to insist that this left-wing association is somehow "out of kilter with much of the rest of the world" . . . OK, give me something tangible. How is 'folk' (whatever you mean by that) a vehicle of belligerent nationalism in "much of the rest of the world"?

And then while your at it, please explain how all of this relates to the topic of this thread.

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: glueman
Date: 09 Sep 09 - 05:05 PM

"GM, you equated folk with belligerent nationalism."

Yes, not exclusively but it's often there in the mix.

"I pointed out that folk in the UK is more often associated with left-wing politics and looks askance at such things"

I agree, though the line between rheumy-eyed nostalgia and 'it was much better before (insert scapegoat of preference)' is a fine one as some threads on here testify. If you think folk is devoid of right-thinking sensibilities you're blind or have been very lucky.

"OK, give me something tangible. How is 'folk' (whatever you mean by that) a vehicle of belligerent nationalism in "much of the rest of the world"?

I refuse to even open the sites but try Googling 'folk and nationalism' and see what pops up, you may be more daring than me.

"And then while your at it, please explain how all of this relates to the topic of this thread."

Thread drift, we answer the previous replies, it's not a classroom.

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Goose Gander
Date: 09 Sep 09 - 06:53 PM

Folk can be associated with nationalism of the belligerent sort, or nationalism of a harmless or even positive variety. It can be a vehicle for marginalized populations to express resistance to the chauvinism, or it can be window dressing for racialist nationalism. You argued that left-wing tendencies among UK folkies are an anomaly . . . ("It's one of those instances where the folk revival as a branch of British post-war socialism is out of kilter with much of the rest of the world, though that gap is narrowing all the time.") . . . but if that's your argument, I'd like to see the evidence. Fans of Russian folk music are motivated by aggressive Russian nationalism? El Salvadoran folk music is the preferred music of the nation's right-wingers? Cambodian folk dance holds a hidden, fascist subtext? Yes, I would like to see the evidence that the majority of folk-related things and folk-associated folks are steeped in right-wing nationalism.

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Sep 09 - 07:29 PM

"You have form on taking any comment I make and saying 'where did I say that?"
And you constantly, thread after thread, make (I believe deliberately) inaccurate statements and accustions which you refuse either to substantiate or withdraw.
It is a persistant technique which is both dishonest and spineless.
At least your mentor tries to waffle his way out of his foot-in-mouths.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 04:29 AM

"if anyone on Mudcat can be said to Define Folk, it's your good self"

When I said that back there I meant it, glueman. I'm not being in any way smart or ironic, just according respect where respect is most surely due. Hopefully we're here because we love the music, a good deal of which I wouldn't have heard if it wasn't for the faith, diligence and hard work of Jim Carroll and people like him.

At least your mentor tries to waffle his way out of his foot-in-mouths.

I am not anyone's mentor, old man - and I grow increasingly weary of the association. Here we are individuals, we think for ourselves, even the sycophant Shimrod, gawd bless 'im! Here, I hope, there are no enemies, just a bunch of mates having a natter.

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 04:35 AM

Since when has 'sycophancy' been synonymous with 'agreement'?

Anyway, as I was saying before I was interrupted by 'glueman's' sycophant SO'P ...

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 04:46 AM

Anyway, as I was saying before I was interrupted by 'glueman's' sycophant SO'P ...

A point of order there, Shimrod - I don't think I've ever openly agreed with anything glueman has said here. Trouble is, I don't know who glueman is, much less Shimrod, all I have to go on are on-line personas which don't incline me to be interested one way or another. For all I know Shimrod and glueman could be one person merrily trolling away. Maybe it's time to take the masks off and see just who we're dealing with here.

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 05:36 AM

"I am not anyone's mentor, old man"
Sorry - village idiot and nodding dog as far as I can see
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 06:27 AM

Sorry - written in irritation and a little over the top.
Should read - vaccuous pontificator and his nodding dog.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: glueman
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 07:31 AM

"Hopefully we're here because we love the music, a good deal of which I wouldn't have heard if it wasn't for the faith, diligence and hard work of Jim Carroll and people like him." SOP

"Sorry - village idiot and nodding dog as far as I can see"
Jim Carroll

"Should read - vaccuous pontificator and his nodding dog."
Jim Carroll

The former may justify the latter for you SOP, I suspect he's dined out on some undeniably good work once too often.

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 07:48 AM

The former may justify the latter for you SOP, I suspect he's dined out on some undeniably good work once too often.

It's only a forum, glueman - we come here willingly and (hopefully) take no offence at such harmless barracking which is surely par for the course with respect of the curmudgeonly old revivalists who make it all worthwhile anyway. At least they do for me - be they on Mudcat or in the cubs I frequent. Like them, I very much doubt Jim's the type to rest on his laurels, much less dine out on them.

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 07:49 AM

In the cubs I frequent? Oh hell - before anyone raises a mob that should be clubs, as in folk clubs...

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: glueman
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 08:09 AM

My take on the business is this - folk music, whatever else it may be, is not a history lesson. Those who want to turn it into the equivalent of collecting numbers on a railway platform are welcome to do so but they are not entitled to lecture others; it's music, my appreciation of it is as good as the next man's.

Sadly the next man has wrapped it in snares and briars and made it inaccessible - it really shouldn't be, it's tunes, good and bad for people to sing and play. There is no entry point where one can't care about the backstory and appreciate the 'text' from a contemporary viewpoint and that state is maintained by a mix of cantankerousness and clubbish connoiseurship which is unfortunate.

I'm interested in the real phenomenon of the folk revival but don't buy into the shibboleths on which it's built. I approach it as a person of my time, informed by the things of that time.

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Brian Peters
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 09:18 AM

>> There is no entry point where one can't care about the backstory and appreciate the 'text' from a contemporary viewpoint <<

You can find history-free, lecture-free folk music any day of the week and any weekend in summer, if you want to. Just go to some gigs. You don't have to attend the workshops as well.

If, on the other hand, you spend your hours logged on to a folk music discussion group, you shouldn't be surprised to find discussions about folk music.

And if you want to go around starting threads called 'Does Folk Exist', and demanding proof of the 'folk process', you might accept the responses you get with interest and good grace, instead of sneering about trainspotters and Asperger's syndrome.

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: glueman
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 09:47 AM

"You can find history-free, lecture-free folk music any day of the week and any weekend in summer, if you want to. Just go to some gigs."

I do, often. It's hard to relate that living thing to the musty sepulchre some people want to turn it into. The genuinely good grace responses are always returned in kind, the waspish ones get fly swatted. I'm a bogey man because a few people have decided that's my role because they don't like what I say, that doesn't mean it's not true.
If a few go in for monkey business I reserve the right to shout 'monkey!'

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 10:27 AM

P O'B
"…..if it wasn't for the faith, diligence and hard work of Jim Carroll and people like him."

Please do not patronise me – I doubt if you have any idea what kind of collectors Pat and I are and whether we did a reasonable job or made a complete hames of it – have you heard our recordings, apart from the few artefacts we have issued on a tiny handful of albums (have you heard all or any of them)? And please don't insult me by reducing my experience to that of a collector – done a bit more than that over the last forty odd years (singer, club organiser, beer glass collector, chair mover, workshop organiser and participant, archive setter-upper and contributor…...)
Folkie Dave is right; I have become increasingly irritated by the extraordinary arrogance of these recent threads.
What are we being asked to accept? We are apparently being asked to take on trust the armchair musings of two individuals who not only have carried out no research themselves whatever, but appear to be proud of that fact ("never read a book in my life….." (sorry to repeat this but it goes through these threads like 'Blackpool' goes though rock)); one of who appears to believe that anybody who disagrees with him is mad (come back Norman Bates, all is forgiven!) and another who goes into near-orgasmic ecstasies when an organisation he has spent a fair deal of time pouring contempt on changes its name. In doing so we are required to abandon the conclusions we have reached as a result of any work we might have done ourselves, as well as that of the army of collectors and researchers over the last century or so, (sloppy and agenda laden as they may be). And for what? The unsubstantiated declarations of the folk equivalents of Del Boy and Rodders, which fly in the face of everything I have come to accept as simple common-sense during my years of involvement .
Let's have a quick shuftie at what's on offer.
'Folk – tradition – oral transmission – are all the wet-dreams of researchers carrying out sloppy and agenda-ridden work.'
In that case, where did the 200-odd versions of Barbara Allen come from; how did 'The Unfortunate Rake' end up in all the locations and personae he/she did throughout the English-speaking world down the centuries; who whittled down 'The Blind Beggar' from its 60/70 verse totally unsingable form to the beautifully flowing 8 verse versions found in Britain, Ireland, the US, Canada…. in the intervening centuries? What turned the somewhat crude and stilted 'The Sea Crabb' to be found in Percy's 'Loose and Humorous Songs,' into the magnificent Chauceresque song recorded all over the British Isles and still to be found here in The West of Ireland (and in many rugby clubs and pubs at chucking-out time)?   
A suggestion; I know you are averse to research so I'll keep it to a minimum (my bit of patronising).
Thumb through the early collections; Percy's 'Reliques', The 'Roxborough' and 'Ebsworth' Ballads, the early printed versions of Child ballads for instance and see how centuries of being carried in the heads and the mouths of 'The Folk' has changed many of them from unsingable stodge into small (and sometimes not so small) masterpieces. Now how did that happen, I wonder!!! I go with MacColl's beautiful description from the Song Carriers;
"Well, there they are, the songs of our people. Some of them have been centuries in the making, some of them undoubtedly were born on the broadside presses. Some have the marvellous perfection of stones shaped by the sea's movement. Others are as brash as a cup-final crowd. They were made by professional bards and by unknown poets at the plough-stilts and the handloom. They are tender, harsh,, passionate, ironical, simple, profound.... as varied, indeed, as the landscape of this island.
We are indebted to the Harry Coxes and Phil Tanners, to Colm Keane and Maggie MacDonagh, to Belle Stewart and Jessie Murray and to all the sweet and raucous unknown singers who have helped to carry our people's songs across the centuries."
Was going to go on to the 'anonymous master composer' suggestion, but this is already far too long – another time maybe!
Parting shot to our folk revisionists.
There's a rather amusing cartoon pinned up over the bar in our local, which depicts two peahens looking on at a peacock's magnificent display; one peahen is saying "Never mind all that shit – show us your willie".
How about it lads?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: glueman
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 10:45 AM

I'll show you mine if you show me yours JC.

I have a problem with collectors, I admit it. Clarice Cliff hoarders, people who want every Allcock rod made, those who seek to cop each Class 37 diesel built. It's wrong on so many levels but basically it's just wrong giving vent to that completist gene. I hope I treat such people with good grace in real life but folk is stuffed with them, absolutely chokka-bloody-block.

Most of the debate here is internal, there's no dialogue, no examination of the absolute fundamental terms of engagement. That's what these eternal folk-is threads are about (very few OP'ed by me incidentally), a desire to put folk through the grinder, leave it to people who know nothing about folk, to those expert in other fields, to real ordinary people who wouldn't know a broadside from a backside. They keep cropping up because there's an itch that has to be scratched, a folk world beyond the folk club, beyond 1954, beyond 'give me three examples of what you just said'.

I disliked card collectors in the playground as I disliked 'name six football clubs with blue shorts', all that stack it up and hide behind it stuff, I ain't going to change now.

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 11:12 AM

snares and briars

I picked up a copy of that in Preston market on Tuesday for £10 - pristine condition too apart from some slight scuffing on the spine. A fine album which finds Sarah, Flora and Jacqui Clitheroe in fine voice in this sisters-only tribute to their late-mother Ethel who died in the summer of 1976. Sarah's solo album Seven Years a Tongue to the Warning Bell was recorded the following autumn and was met with hostility by the folk-scene who couldn't deal with an album of such bleak ballads, much less one that was effectively field-recorded in a church (Saint Michael's in Sallerford, Norfolk), thus eschewing all the studio conventions of the time. Snares and Briars (1980) is a different kettle of fish altogether, finding the twins reunited with their older sister in a tight set of songs from their mother's repertoire, both traditional and non-traditional (a masterful Wibbly-Wobbly Walk is a high point) though it's worth noting that in her sleevenote Jacqui Clitheroe points out that Ethel made no such distinctions herself:

Father (Frank Clitheroe) remains the revivalist ideologue he has always been, whilst to Mother the songs were just a part of her idyllic rural childhood spent with her molecatching father on the Lancastrian Fylde. Many of the songs here were recorded by Ethel on her 1965 LP The Molecatcher's Daughter - songs as much remembered as they were collected from her own father during his latter days which were spent as an inmate of one of Lancashire's most secure asylums since the Christmas Ethel came down to find him nursing his wife's skull, newly exhumed from the grave where she'd lain since her life expired giving her only daughter life. It is touching that father and daughter were able to find a point of communication in his final years as Ethel determinedly recorded every note of his extensive repertoire.

The trauma lingers along with the joys and the laughter, but beneath all was the darkness that many listeners could detect in my mother's singing of her father's songs, a darkness which is perhaps evident here, even in the most happy of songs - perhaps especially in the most happy of songs - for in that happiness is an ideal which must be set against the reality of the life from which it sprung. Ethel called these songs Father's Songs - in the family we call them Grandfather's Songs - which include both the old traditional songs and the popular songs of Grandfather's time, the songs Grandfather loved and sang, from the plaintive Snares and Briars (which gives this collection its name) to the decidedly upbeat The Inebriated Spectre that Put the Wind Right-Up the Rector, an obscure music-hall song indicating both the breadth and depth of Grandfather's musical appreciation.

It's a damn fine album at any rate. I've just invested in one of those USB turntable things but all it's done is given me a taste for old vinyls, the digitising of which would be as sacrilegious as scanning old books to make e-versions.

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 11:17 AM

Was going to go on to the 'anonymous master composer' suggestion, but this is already far too long – another time maybe!

Looking forward to it, old man.

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 11:24 AM

beer glass collector

In the same sense as folk song collector? I bought a Newcastle Brown Ale glass off my landlord the other night in a drunken moment of nostalgia; it joins my Laughing Gravy glass, though maybe two beer glasses probably don't count as a collection.

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: glueman
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 11:29 AM

Three might. Then it'll be 'Beer Glass Design, history, science and sociology 1876 - 1965' by R. Sole and selling your your's to eBay. Don't give in to your double helix.

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Goose Gander
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 12:03 PM

"I have a problem with collectors, I admit it. Clarice Cliff hoarders, people who want every Allcock rod made, those who seek to cop each Class 37 diesel built. It's wrong on so many levels but basically it's just wrong giving vent to that completist gene. I hope I treat such people with good grace in real life but folk is stuffed with them, absolutely chokka-bloody-block."

If you can't make a distinction between knick-knack collectors and song collectors in the context of a discussion about folk music, then perhaps you should go back to playing with marbles and pulling pig-tails.

At least SO'P seems motivated by genuine interest in and enjoyment of music. I'm not sure why you showed up, other than to waste your own time trolling around, flinging invectives, and constructing logical fallacies.

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 12:28 PM

At least SO'P seems motivated by genuine interest in and enjoyment of music.

You read that, old man? Now that's what I call patronising!

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 01:55 PM

"Looking forward to it, old man. "
No - that's what I call patronising
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Tug the Cox
Date: 11 Sep 09 - 07:26 AM

Whoever tries to define it will be gainsaid at least 177 times. Look, its a polymorphous concept. Not everything goes, but the boundaries are fluid, and at the boundaries there will always be disagreements. That's just how it is, enjoy!

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Iains
Date: 13 Feb 19 - 04:13 AM

Refresh

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Feb 19 - 06:07 AM

Irrelevant - who cares ?

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Feb 19 - 10:05 AM

I wonder why a decade old thread now being covered by at least two other threads has been reopened - well no - I know exactly why it has.
Perhaps the mod can ask themselves the same question ?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 13 Feb 19 - 10:31 AM

Hell is other folkies...

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Rain Dog
Date: 13 Feb 19 - 11:02 AM

Folk knows!

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Feb 19 - 03:33 AM

Festival organisers, and faded pop stars who need a genre to boost their fading revenue.

And they still get paid more than 11 ceilidh bands put together for the same festival.

And they have the unspeakable arrogance to tell us how to vote.

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: saulgoldie
Date: 14 Feb 19 - 07:59 AM

So what if this has already been done to death several times over? There is always someone who missed it the first fortyleven times. And this IS a forum that is dedicated to folk music, right?

I was surprised that "1954" did not appear in this thread until well past the middle. That is often the beginning, the end, and "pour me another one; we ain't nearly done with this!" discussions.

One take from way back was this one, which makes pretty good sense to me:

**
From: Celtaddict - PM
Date: 31 Mar 03 - 10:21 AM

Rick is right.
Who defines folk?
I do. When I sing it.
He does. When he sings it.
You do. When you sing it.
**

'Nother one is, was it Pete Seeger? Or Schooner Fare?
"Folk music is music that folks sing."
**

I don't worry too much about it. Once you try to pin it down, as with 1954, you leave yourself open to "exceptions." Basically, it is like trying to nail Jello to the wall.

Saul

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 14 Feb 19 - 09:43 AM

Good!

That one sorted out then!

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Iains
Date: 14 Feb 19 - 10:50 AM

Don't bank on it. But I think the analogy of nailing jello to the wall summarises the problem neatly. Saulgoldie deserves a pint.

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 14 Feb 19 - 12:42 PM

Howzabout we just give up and pass the buck upstairs..

.. and settle on God in all his infinite wisdom and mysterious ways defines folk...???

It's not for us mere mortals to ask questions why he does stuff...

There.. that easily sorts that out...

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 14 Feb 19 - 02:23 PM

I thought God had already sorted it all. Problem is some of us don't believe in him (Thank God!)

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 14 Feb 19 - 02:45 PM

Yeah... but defining Folk would have been as good a reason as any for us non believers to invent God...

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 14 Feb 19 - 03:58 PM

'Who Defines folk?' Quite correct. Dr Who went off in the Tardis back to the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and found that indeed all the songs were written by milkmaids, ploughboys, travellers, farmhands, roadmenders, etc...…… and some were even written by Daleks, or was that written in dialects?

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: The Sandman
Date: 14 Feb 19 - 04:49 PM

If we had a seance we could ask cecil sharp

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Joe Offer
Date: 14 Feb 19 - 05:04 PM

Who defines folk? 1954. Full stop. It's actually quite arbitrary, and 1954 works as well as any of them, so why not stick with it? We need no further definition, if we need definition at all.

Why define folk? The wannabe star musicians working in record/CD/MP3/Streaming outlets (the musicians who don't deliver pizzas), because they need to know what bin to put the merchandise in.

Why fight about it? Well, people get bored at times, and want to make pronouncements about what's important or not important to talk about at Mudcat while we're diverting ourselves from the political diatribes.

---

Dick Miles posted the 1954 definition in 2007. It still sounds pretty good to me.

Thread #104945   Message #2154089
Posted By: The Sandman
21-Sep-07 - 03:51 AM
Thread Name: Is the 1954 definition, open to improvement?
Subject: Isthe1954defining,improvable

Definition of Folk Music, decided by the International Folk Music Council in 1954.

Folk music is the product of a musical tradition that has been evolved through the process of oral transmission. The factors that shape the tradition are: (i) continuity which links the present with the past; (ii) variation which springs from the creative impulse of the individual or the group; and (iii) selection by the community, which determines the form or forms in which the music survives.
The term can be applied to music that has been evolved from rudimentary beginnings by a community uninfluenced by popular and art music and it can likewise be applied to music which has originated with an individual composer and has subsequently been absorbed into the unwritten living tradition of a community.
The term does not cover composed popular music that has been taken over ready-made by a community and remains unchanged, for it is the re-fashioning and re-creation of the music by the community that gives it its folk character.

Is this definition open to improvement, and do you have any suggestions as to how it can be improved. Dick Miles

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Iains
Date: 14 Feb 19 - 05:41 PM

Joe using the 1954 definition leaves a huge body of work recorded by the likes of the Dubliners, and many other folk groups, hanging in Limbo. Also the world has moved on since 1954. The hoary sons of the soil are not going to be gathered in a pub scribbling down the words or trying to remember the tune.They will whip out their phone and carry on swigging their pint. This wipes out most of the 1954 definition.

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Andy7
Date: 14 Feb 19 - 08:05 PM

I think we need a world referendum on the definition of folk music.

Anyone in the world who wishes to, can have their own definition added to the ballot paper. This (perhaps rather long) ballot paper will then be translated into every language in the world.

Then everyone in the world can vote on the definition of folk music which best matches their own preference. (That's if they haven't bothered to submit their own definition to be included on the ballot paper; if they have, they will naturally vote for their own definition ... when they can find it.)

The final result will be ratified by the United Nations, and will be the incontestable definition of folk music for a period of 3 years. After which, a new ballot will be held; after all, both opinions and music change over time.

Ah, the simplest ideas are so often the best!

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Joe Offer
Date: 14 Feb 19 - 08:21 PM

So, if Iains is correct, then the main point of the argument is whether singer-songwriters should be included in the category of "folk music." I think a song isn't folk music until it has been passed around for a generation or two - and I am sure many purists would think that my definition is too loose. But does it matter? To me, it's all a matter of opinion.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Feb 19 - 02:44 AM

" and I am sure many purists would think that my definition is too loose"
My intention of taking part in a thread that is adequately dealt with elsewhere has just been confirmed when a mod begins to use abusive language towards those who take our folk music seriously
There are those who take folk music seriously and those who "just wanna have fun"
The term "purist" is every bit as abusive as is "folk police" and "finger in ear"
A responsible mod needs to delete it otherwise we we never be able to have a sensible and friendly exchange of ideas
Have fun
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 15 Feb 19 - 03:14 AM

You are all drifting off the original question as asked by 'spaw. Rest his soul. The term 'defines' in the title is nothing to do with the definitions you are discussing. He was asking who, to you, is the folk act that you would suggest typifies folk music. In his owm words, "Who defines Folk based on the same criterion as Ellington defining Jazz?"

If spaw was around today I am sure he would have a choice, accurate and very humourous phrase to describe those arguing about something entirely different :-)

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Joe Offer
Date: 15 Feb 19 - 03:31 AM

Sorry, Jim, but I disagree. The definition of folk music can be a worthy enterprise, but it's nothing to get in a tizzy about because, in the end, the definition is necessarily arbitrary and a matter of opinion. We can say that some people think that folk music is this; but then in fairness, we have to admit that other people think that folk music is that - and both are perfectly valid opinions. The phenomenon of folk music lies within the parameters of the various definitions.

Now, it is certainly valid to specify a definition of folk music to be used within a particular study or endeavor, but I do not believe that an absolute and all-encompassing definition is possible.

But where achieving an exact definition is futile, the exploration of the phenomenon of folk music can be quite fruitful - as proved by the two excellent books titled Folk Song in England.

So, Jim, if the word "purist" is abusive, would you prefer the term "diva"? ;-)

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Feb 19 - 03:48 AM

Definition can only be a matter of opinion if both have been thought out and argued for - we have a definition which first came into being way back in the 1840s - no-one yet has successfully contradicted the one that has been used since - there are libraries full
Terms lke "purist" and now "diva" are offensive terms which make me avoid people who use them like the plague
A mod using them on a forum dedicated to the traditional arts is downright irresponsible
You really are little different from the individual we fell out over recently - insulting other posters has no place here
Enjoy your company
Jim

Subject: RE: Who Defines 'Folk'????
From: Rain Dog
Date: 15 Feb 19 - 04:19 AM

Just as a matter of interest, what were the other 1,953 definitions of folk?