Re: What is a folk song?

[Sylvia Schildt <creativa...>]

I am also reminded of the inimitable Anna Russell's line in "Backwards with
the Folksong (Anna Russell Sings!) -- in which she characterizes the folk
song as "the uncouth vocal utterance of the people, often accompanied by a
simple instrument".

When a people possesses a song, it becomes part of the ethnic memory, and
various versions pop up as imperfect memory takes over.


I think the greatest complement the creators can have is when the song is
perceived as a folk song - examples, Afn Pripitchik, Kinder Yorn, Reyzele,
Rabeynu Taam.  Warshavsky, Gebirtig, Manger have achieved this lofty status,
in my view.

Sylvia Schildt
Baltimore, Maryland





on 1/12/04 11:49 PM, music (at) sterlingmp(dot)org at music (at) 
sterlingmp(dot)org wrote:

> Sylvia Schildt writes:
> 
>> I mean a folk song is one whose authorship is lost to time and has many
>> versions.  
> 
> These are, certainly, conventional distinctions.  But, fwiw, I and many other
> students, historians, etc., of folk music don't accept them.
> 
> I believe it was Francis B. Gummere who made the distinction between "the
> definition by destination and the definition by origins."
> 
>> From the liner notes of, I believe, one of my historical folk music records
> (I'm embarrassed to have photocopied the following without a note of what
> record it came from, and am not going to determine it now):
> 
> "A more fruitful conception of folk music is obtained if one casts aside the
> criterion of origins and concentrates on possession; it doesn't matter where
> a particular song or tune originated; what does matter is what has become
> of it....if [a] piece of music has become part of the collective lore of the
> community, then it has become folk music."
> 
> This definition, I think, far more accurately suits our intuitive notion of
> what
> is folk music.  (I believe in a Potter Stewart definition of folk music:  We
> know
> it when we hear it).  "The Hammer Song" ("If I Had a Hammer") is a folk song,
> though we know not only who its composers were but exactly where and when
> they wrote it.  "This Land Is Your Land" is a folk song.  (Ditto.)  Rod
> MacDonald's
> "Sailor's Prayer" and Si Kahn's "Aragon Mill" have both been "mistaken" for
> "folk" songs by Sylvia's traditional definition -- but that's an invariable
> indication
> that they *are* -- they have become -- folk songs.
> 
> In Jewish music, "Rozhinkes mit Mandlen" is a folk song, and so is "Oyfn
> Pripitchek" --
> which, apparently, was being taken as a "folk song" -- i.e., it had "lost its
> composer"
> and was assumed to be "traditional" -- within weeks of its composition.
> 
> A second part of Sylvia's distinction:
> 
>> I think of art songs as someone's poetry set to music.
> 
> likewise, perhaps, raises more questions than it answers.  For one thing, some
> songs 
> fitting this definition would surely be considered folk songs -- like John
> Jacob Niles',
> perhaps?!  And is "Mr. Tambourine Man" (set to music, obviously, by the
> writer) an
> art song, a folk song, or neither?  What about other Dylan songs, and Joni
> Mitchell's
> songs, and so many others?
> 
> Finally, Sylvia or someone else noted that folk songs tend to be (communally)
> singable.
> That is certainly very often so, and is true of many songs that we would
> consider to be
> folk songs; I think it's a reasonable component of a guide to the turf of what
> (often) 
> constitutes a folk song.  But it still leaves much of the creative product of
> today's singer-
> songwriters sort-of unclassifiable.
> 
> -- Robert Cohen
> 
> 

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