Folk music: a definition

Subject: Folk music: a definition
From: michaelr
Date: 14 Apr 05 - 07:35 PM

"When Oisin was an old, old man and when all the other Fianna were dead, he was asked by Saint Patrick what was the music that Finn and the Fianna loved best to hear. Remembering those days and the sunburnt companions who were long gone, he told the holy man that the best music was






...the music of what happened."

It occurs to me that that's as good a definition of folk music as I've heard. What do you think?

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Apr 05 - 07:52 PM

By George, I think he's got it...

I groaned when I saw this thread, but I opened it out of habit and curiosity, and was pleasantly surprised by what I found. It says it all, implicitly.

Maybe it could put the non-singing horse out to pasture.

(Where's the exact source of the quote, though?)

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: Beer
Date: 14 Apr 05 - 08:20 PM

Passed over this thread thinking here we go again, but like you McGarth I just had to have a peek. That is a great explaination/defenition. I'm not familar with Oisin. A little light please Michaelr.
Beer

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 14 Apr 05 - 08:32 PM

My first thought too was 'Sigh!', but I do like the quote.

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: Blissfully Ignorant
Date: 14 Apr 05 - 08:33 PM

Sounds good to me...:0)

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Apr 05 - 08:44 PM

Oisin - son of Fionn MacCool, and here's a pleasing short version of his story. But it'd be good to have the version michaelr was quoting from.

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: Blissfully Ignorant
Date: 14 Apr 05 - 08:47 PM

Aw, that's a sad story...

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: Peace
Date: 14 Apr 05 - 09:22 PM

It works for me, michaelr. Good one.

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: jacqui.c
Date: 14 Apr 05 - 10:34 PM

What a wonderful story, and a good definition of folk music.

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: michaelr
Date: 14 Apr 05 - 10:54 PM

The quote is "from the ancient Fenian Cycle, as retold by Marie Heaney in `Over Nine Waves', Faber and Faber, 1994".

That's what the liner notes to Nollaig Casey's (the Goddess of Irish fiddling!) 2004 CD "The Music of What Happened" (Old Bridge Music) say. A brilliant record, by the way. Nollaig has long been one of Irelands greatest and most adventurous fiddlers, as evidenced in her long association with Donal Lunny and the recorded work that resulted, including collaborations with Galician piper Carlos Nunez, as well as her albums with guitarist husband Arty McGlynn and her contributions to several albums by Sharon Shannon and others.

I was surprised to find that ex-Cherich the Ladies singer Cathie Ryan just relaeased a CD with the same title.

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 14 Apr 05 - 10:54 PM

I'm with McGrath. I like the definition a lot. It's pretty much what I've always thought.

Art

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: CarolC
Date: 14 Apr 05 - 11:02 PM

It's a great quote, but I don't think it can include all of folk music. Folk songs maybe. But there is a wealth of folk music that has no words and tells no stories. That is music that simply expresses feelings, not necessarily connected to anything that has happened.

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: michaelr
Date: 15 Apr 05 - 12:39 AM

Good point, Carol -- and that would be the music of What Is!

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 15 Apr 05 - 06:11 AM

Even that music came from "What happened" Carol, given that the emotions of its creators were a result of their life experiences.

I'll buy it! It fits my personal conception of what folk is about, life, the universe, and everything.

Don T.

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: CarolC
Date: 15 Apr 05 - 01:30 PM

and that would be the music of What Is

I agree with this (and not with your 15 Apr 05 - 06:11 AM post, Don... sorry). "Feelings" don't need to be connected to anything whatever. They are one of the things that have the luxury of just being. And they can even be about what hasn't happened yet, but what is desired.

For me, instrumental music (the kind of music I do), is about flow. It has no connections to the past, present, or future. It has no connections to events. It's just there for the beauty and enjoyment it provides me in the here and now. And that is often also true with the music of dance, one of the most important forms of folk music. Dance doesn't ever need to be about anything. It is an expression of what is now. Even if it was first created hundreds of years ago. It's in the dancing and the playing of it now that makes it "folk", rather than museum artifacts.

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 15 Apr 05 - 02:00 PM

The way I heard the story is that "what happens" -present tense - is the best music, and I always took it as a Celtic Zenny kind of thing: the best music *is* what actually happens, not words or tunes *about* what happens. Or in this case, happened.

clint

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: Big Mick
Date: 15 Apr 05 - 03:49 PM

Just exactly who is this upstart poster who dares come in here and give a definition to all of us sage, veteran posters and quell the longest running debate here?

Never mind the man behind the curtain, young man. And never presume to come in here with such an obvious answer. Shit, what would we all have to live for if we couldn't argue over this.

By the way, I am predicting the Bosox will finally break the curse of the Bambino in the near future.

Mick
with tongue planted firmly in cheek

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Apr 05 - 04:15 PM

"What happened" includes emotions and feelings as much as events (though in reality surely our feelings and emotins are events every bit as much as the external events which might shape them) - and the past includes everything up to the last millisecond. Or, to put it another way, the present includes the past.

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past. TS Eliot - Burnt Norton.

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: CarolC
Date: 15 Apr 05 - 05:19 PM

People who are song oriented tend to think that way, McGrath, but it doesn't take into consideration the many non event-related and non word-related, and even the non concept-related ways in which people can experience music.

For the person who first composed one of the pieces of traditional Finnish music I like to play, there may have been a connection between the music composed and something that happened. Or there might not. It might have been pure spur of the moment inspiration not related to anything whatever. And as the piece has progressed through the folk process and has changed with the different ways people have played it, each person and his or her changes to the piece don't need to be related to anything except for each person's preference about how the way they play it makes them feel. But regardless of what the person who first composed the piece did or did not experience, or any of the people who have contributed to the folk process of that piece, when I play it, it has nothing to do with anything except for the beauty of the music and the way it makes me feel. It's the experience of the music itself that matters.

But again, with dance music, it's not only possible, but even common for "what happened" to have no relevance whatever to the music. Dance music can and frequently does exist only for the pleasure of the dancers and the ones making the music for them, at that particular moment in time, and for the purpose of marrying motion and sound.

You don't have to give up being a song oriented person and embrace a non-song related way of experiencing music, but neither do you get to define my experience of it, or that of the many other people who experience it as I do.

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Apr 05 - 05:39 PM

Dance music can and frequently does exist only for the pleasure of the dancers and the ones making the music for them, at that particular moment in time, and for the purpose of marrying motion and sound.

And that's what happened. Every bit as much as the things that might have happened before.

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: CarolC
Date: 15 Apr 05 - 05:45 PM

No, McGrath. That's not what happened. It is, as michaelr has said, the music of what is.

There really is a very big difference between these two things.

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: Alice
Date: 15 Apr 05 - 07:40 PM

Excellent, michaelr. I groaned, too, when I saw the thread subject, but pleased to see what you posted. Thanks!

alice

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 15 Apr 05 - 09:52 PM

I've always felt that, for me to find these folk songs, I had to sweep the scum of the present off the top of the pond, and then plumb the depths of history and antiquity. That is where the best songs on my song list were hiding out.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: GUEST,nationalzjug
Date: 16 Apr 05 - 09:23 PM

music of the folk

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: greg stephens
Date: 17 Apr 05 - 03:19 AM

I think this is merely a new version of "all music is folk music", but with a more poetic slant, and no mention of horses. I'm not surprised McGrath is in favour, I seem to remember he was always the First Horseman of the Definition.
    No, sorry, I dont buy it. "A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square", for example, is a perfect exposition of "what happened"(though possibly fictional). But wild horses will not persuade me that it is a folksong.

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 17 Apr 05 - 04:31 AM

I just had to take a look, didn't I?

Greg: Why isn't this particular song about a nightingale not a folk song? Barry Dransfield in his notes to the forthcoming CD Unruly says:

I reckon that a folk song is any song that is performed casually and for the love of it (not for the money) by many people for any period of time, that is, more than a few years.

Seems to cover it without the need to mention horses.

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 17 Apr 05 - 07:48 AM

I don't see the problem Greg.

That's a circular argument as in "All cats are grey in the dark, therefore anything that is grey in the dark must be a cat". Not so!

Don T.

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Apr 05 - 08:42 PM

"A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square" It sounds bloody good when John Kirkpatrick sings it with a squeezebox. Whether it's a folksong or not just doesn't seem to matter too much, it becomes a song that can hold its own in the company of folksongs.

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: nager
Date: 18 Apr 05 - 01:27 AM

Manning Sherwin, 1915
Bit older than many other "folk songs"

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 18 Apr 05 - 01:57 AM

Barry Dransfield doesn't necessarily have a better understanding of what "folk music" is than do the rest of us. Age and attitude aren't quite the point; but let's not get too involved in all that just now. I'm with Greg on that one.

I actually turned down the offer of a review copy of Nollaig's cd because I didn't have the space available to do it justice (though I did print a brief notice). It was the honourable thing to do, but it hurt. I do like her playing very much. The quote is neat and clever, but begs as many questions as it answers.

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 18 Apr 05 - 08:57 AM

It must be very cold for you, Malcolm, right up there on your high horse ;-)
Barry D has a far better understanding than many another. Just wait till you've heard Unruly...

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 18 Apr 05 - 01:59 PM

A definition? No. An explanation? Maybe.

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 18 Apr 05 - 07:40 PM

That seems reasonable. Meanwhile, I guess I can consider my wrist well and truly smacked; and from a great height, too.

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: MissKat
Date: 18 Apr 05 - 09:14 PM

"All music is folk music, leastwise I ain't never heard a horse sing," Louis Armstrong.

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: GUEST,horrified
Date: 18 Apr 05 - 09:50 PM

Oh god, not that bloody stupid cliche yet again.

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: MissKat
Date: 19 Apr 05 - 02:55 PM

"I think to be oversensitive about cliches is like being oversensitive about table manners."

Subject: RE: Folk music: a definition
From: GUEST,Don Firth
Date: 19 Apr 05 - 04:45 PM

Actually, it was Big Bill Broonzy who first trotted out that !#%&@$# horse (source: Pete Seeger. If you think otherwise, take it up with him).

The Oisin quote is very poetic and I like it, but I'm afraid it doesn't quite do the job, as can be seen by the number of posts from people who don't find it totally satisfying. Nice try, though.

This is one of the reasons I avoid referring to myself as a "folk singer." Most of the songs I like to sing are folk songs. How do I know they're folk songs? Because they come with a Child number attached, or I got them out of a book of songs compiled by Lomax or Sharp, or off of a record or CD by someone who tells me in the liner notes that it's a folk song and I have good reason to believe that he or she didn't write it just last week or it didn't come from a Broadway musical. But I don't limit myself just to songs that, in my readily admitted fuzzy opinion, are folk songs, I also sing a number of songs that most people (unless they're horse lovers) would agree are not folk songs. Nor do I try to adopt a "folksy" style, I just open my yap and sing it (whatever it is) the best I can.

I take a leaf from Richard Dyer-Bennet's book: he said that he doesn't consider himself to be a "folk singer." He regarded himself as being in the tradition of the minstrels and troubadours, self-accompanied singers who made their living as professional entertainers.

I have essentially given up trying to define "folk music" because in this modern world of fast travel and mass communication, the term "folk" (the rural peasant class) is no longer as clear-cut as it once was. When the lexicographers finally clear this up (if ever), I may give it another shot. Until then, for those who insist on trying to define "folk music," I think there should be a good 12-step program. . . .

Don Firth