I'm going to be thinking about this all day (and may end up leaving multiple comments). I think it's really interesting, and when you talk about the different uses of the term "folk music" those are distinctions that I'm familiar with, but you use them differently than I would.
Before trying to pull some of those thoughts together, I want…
I'm going to be thinking about this all day (and may end up leaving multiple comments). I think it's really interesting, and when you talk about the different uses of the term "folk music" those are distinctions that I'm familiar with, but you use them differently than I would.
Before trying to pull some of those thoughts together, I wanted to start with a couple of quotes that I come back to in terms of thinking about what is the heart of folk music. First, one of the best arguments for an expansive definition of the term is this Arlo Gutherie discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSF89swJ9IU
"Everything was fine until Pete [Seeger] looked at me and said, 'Arlo, why don't you sing something?' I realized Pete had just sung all of the songs I thought anybody might know. I didn't know what to do. I said, 'Well here's one you might know . . . made popular by the king of folk singers Elvis Presley.' Pete looked at me. Seemed like a nice guy most of the time; he had a look in his eye that said that banjo could get fairly dangerous any moment . . ." Leading into a wonderful performance of "I Can't Help Falling In Love With You" (based on a 17th Century French song)
But, given the long history of arguments about what constitutes a folk song, here are a couple of good capsule versions (which I happen to have gotten from my dad).
"This civilization of ours is a fast-moving thing. New inventions and discoveries continually change our ways of living: we move from place to place, and not many of us get to live in the places where our parents spent their childhood. In some ways, the changes are good: distant neighbors are not so distant as they used to be, and we are slowly learning not to be suspicious of people just because they happen to be different in some way from ourselves. But one effect that is not so good is that it is hard for us to see how we are related to our ancestors, whose lives were so different from ours. And this makes it hard for us to say, "I know who I am, and I know where I belong in the world." In my own case, the study of folk music has made this easier. My ancestors seem more real to me when I learn that they and I have laughed at the same song; and when I sing a song that I learned from my mother, who learned it from her father, who learned it from his father, and so on back for generations. I have a feeling that there is a place for me in the world, because so many people have helped to prepare it for me. Even when I sing new songs, it gives me pleasure to think that it may live to be an old song, and that, in some far-off day, somebody may feel a kinship with me because of it. And, so, I am passing these songs on to you, in the hope that you will enjoy them, that you will make some of them your own songs, and that you may pass them along to future boys and girls who will call you their ancestor."
"One of the most important things about folksongs that makes them different from other kinds of songs is that there is never just one way to do them: everybody can sing them in his own way, and nobody can say that there is any "right" or "wrong" about it. Of course, if a song came from the mountains of Kentucky, and if you weren't raised in the mountains of Kentucky, when you sing it your way it will no longer be a Kentucky mountain folksong. But it will be your song."
From Liner Notes For "Whoever Shall Have Some Good Peanuts" -- Sam Hinton
"Folk music has come to have a real function in all our lives. In a vague but real way, "We", the singers and audience together, form a community of our own. At some time most of us hitch-hiked, sat on floors, read a lot, not read at all, wanted to live away from everybody, and worried about the world, about what the people who run things would mess up next, and about that we might do to improve things. We're mostly urban people, out of power and nervous. And one of the things we do is use folk music. Most of us have no genuine connection with any folk community, and these songs are not genuine to us in an objective way. In other words, nobody thinks we're natives, and we don't have a native music. But since we don't, we're free (given a good bit of nerve) to grab whatever music we like and use it. The result is that we end up being just like mountain people, or blues singers, or cowboys, but relative to our own situation: singing in order to stay sane, and stubborn, to have a good time, and to say how we feel."
From liner notes for "Sandy and Jeanie Darlington" -- Sandy and Jeanie Darlington
Leon Rosselson wrote the following in the notes on That's Not the Way it's Got To Be! talking about his songwriting.
"These songs are not folk songs. They may, it is true, have been influenced by the idiom of folk song. It is true also that without the folk revival and the folk clubs, they would probably not have been written and would certainly not have been sung. And they do, I think, share with folk songs a concern for words--as opposed to the pop world's preoccupation with sounds, whether it be the sounds of protest, the sounds of poetry, the sounds of sitars rippling in the mystical breezes of transcendental meditation, or the sounds of a million well-fed cash registers playing a Song for Europe."
"But they are not folk songs. I think the traditionalists are right in wanting to keep the term--if it is to have any meaning at all-to describe the traditional culture of a
particular class. These songs are self-conscious rather than class-conscious, self-centered rather than community-centered, personal rather than impersonal. In any case, I don't believe modern folk songs can grow in the sort of urbanized, fragmented, intensely individualistic and competitive society we live in."
I'm going to be thinking about this all day (and may end up leaving multiple comments). I think it's really interesting, and when you talk about the different uses of the term "folk music" those are distinctions that I'm familiar with, but you use them differently than I would.
Before trying to pull some of those thoughts together, I wanted to start with a couple of quotes that I come back to in terms of thinking about what is the heart of folk music. First, one of the best arguments for an expansive definition of the term is this Arlo Gutherie discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSF89swJ9IU
"Everything was fine until Pete [Seeger] looked at me and said, 'Arlo, why don't you sing something?' I realized Pete had just sung all of the songs I thought anybody might know. I didn't know what to do. I said, 'Well here's one you might know . . . made popular by the king of folk singers Elvis Presley.' Pete looked at me. Seemed like a nice guy most of the time; he had a look in his eye that said that banjo could get fairly dangerous any moment . . ." Leading into a wonderful performance of "I Can't Help Falling In Love With You" (based on a 17th Century French song)
But, given the long history of arguments about what constitutes a folk song, here are a couple of good capsule versions (which I happen to have gotten from my dad).
"This civilization of ours is a fast-moving thing. New inventions and discoveries continually change our ways of living: we move from place to place, and not many of us get to live in the places where our parents spent their childhood. In some ways, the changes are good: distant neighbors are not so distant as they used to be, and we are slowly learning not to be suspicious of people just because they happen to be different in some way from ourselves. But one effect that is not so good is that it is hard for us to see how we are related to our ancestors, whose lives were so different from ours. And this makes it hard for us to say, "I know who I am, and I know where I belong in the world." In my own case, the study of folk music has made this easier. My ancestors seem more real to me when I learn that they and I have laughed at the same song; and when I sing a song that I learned from my mother, who learned it from her father, who learned it from his father, and so on back for generations. I have a feeling that there is a place for me in the world, because so many people have helped to prepare it for me. Even when I sing new songs, it gives me pleasure to think that it may live to be an old song, and that, in some far-off day, somebody may feel a kinship with me because of it. And, so, I am passing these songs on to you, in the hope that you will enjoy them, that you will make some of them your own songs, and that you may pass them along to future boys and girls who will call you their ancestor."
"One of the most important things about folksongs that makes them different from other kinds of songs is that there is never just one way to do them: everybody can sing them in his own way, and nobody can say that there is any "right" or "wrong" about it. Of course, if a song came from the mountains of Kentucky, and if you weren't raised in the mountains of Kentucky, when you sing it your way it will no longer be a Kentucky mountain folksong. But it will be your song."
From Liner Notes For "Whoever Shall Have Some Good Peanuts" -- Sam Hinton
"Folk music has come to have a real function in all our lives. In a vague but real way, "We", the singers and audience together, form a community of our own. At some time most of us hitch-hiked, sat on floors, read a lot, not read at all, wanted to live away from everybody, and worried about the world, about what the people who run things would mess up next, and about that we might do to improve things. We're mostly urban people, out of power and nervous. And one of the things we do is use folk music. Most of us have no genuine connection with any folk community, and these songs are not genuine to us in an objective way. In other words, nobody thinks we're natives, and we don't have a native music. But since we don't, we're free (given a good bit of nerve) to grab whatever music we like and use it. The result is that we end up being just like mountain people, or blues singers, or cowboys, but relative to our own situation: singing in order to stay sane, and stubborn, to have a good time, and to say how we feel."
From liner notes for "Sandy and Jeanie Darlington" -- Sandy and Jeanie Darlington
Leon Rosselson wrote the following in the notes on That's Not the Way it's Got To Be! talking about his songwriting.
"These songs are not folk songs. They may, it is true, have been influenced by the idiom of folk song. It is true also that without the folk revival and the folk clubs, they would probably not have been written and would certainly not have been sung. And they do, I think, share with folk songs a concern for words--as opposed to the pop world's preoccupation with sounds, whether it be the sounds of protest, the sounds of poetry, the sounds of sitars rippling in the mystical breezes of transcendental meditation, or the sounds of a million well-fed cash registers playing a Song for Europe."
"But they are not folk songs. I think the traditionalists are right in wanting to keep the term--if it is to have any meaning at all-to describe the traditional culture of a
particular class. These songs are self-conscious rather than class-conscious, self-centered rather than community-centered, personal rather than impersonal. In any case, I don't believe modern folk songs can grow in the sort of urbanized, fragmented, intensely individualistic and competitive society we live in."