RE: What is a folk song?

[music <music...>]

Sylvia Schildt wrote (and I think these were her own words):

> 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 compliment 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.


*Absolutely* -- and I share precisely this thought with my audiences and 
students
many times.

What greater compliment to Israel Goldfarb than that his "Shalom Aleichem" is
almost universally regarded (by amcha, anyway) as "traditional" and sung all
over the world -- assumed to have come over on the boat from Eastern Europe
(actually, Goldfarb composed the melody in this country, on the Columbia
University campus in New York City), or even, more astonishingly, to have
been "traditional" in whatever locale it was sung?  (Goldfarb learned that his
melody was being sung in India, regarded as "traditional" and as having been
passed on through generations.)  Even if Goldfarb *did* spend much of his
life convincing people -- including cantors and others knowledgeable in Jewish
music -- that he had written it!

So many of Shlomo Carlebach's melodies, of course, have attained this status
and "lost their composer"; some had done so, it seems, within months.  Debbie
Friedman's best melodies will attain this status over time.  Tanchum Portnoy's
"Eits Chayim" (OK, it's on my CD, shameless plug) *has* attained this status;
out of any 100 congregants singing this melody, often not *one* can identify
the composer.  And Shmuel Brazil's newer "Shalom Aleichem", likewise.

And "Oyfn Pripetshik" is, indeed, a wonderful example, as it was apparently
being sung as a, quote, "folk" (meaning, i.e., "traditional") song within weeks
of its composition.  (It lost its name as well as its composer, since Mark 
Warshawsky called it "Der Alef-Beys.")  And Sholem Aleichem, who was
instrumental in publicizing Warshawsky's work and getting it out there, so
to speak, so appreciated in the song, and in Warshawsky's songs generally,
the quality Sylvia refers to.  "If I didn't know they were your own, I would 
have
to swear I had once heard my mother sing them," he is reported to have
exulted.  (Shlomo Carlebach's melodies sounded, it was said after his death,
like they had always been there.)

And here's what Sholem Aleichem wrote about Warshawsky's songs and about
what becomes a "folk song" generally (it occurs to me that the preceding could
actually be read using either sense of "becomes"):


Not long ago a friend of mine, a Yiddish writer from Warsaw, happened to be in
Odessa for a Yiddish concert and was delighted by one artist's rendition of a
"folk song."  It was Warshawsky's song about "di mizinke."

To this Yiddish writer, Warshawsky's song was a "folk song" and Warshawsky's
name never occurred to him!

Who knows?  Maybe this is a virtue?  Maybe that's the ideal that every creator
could wish for himself, to reach that degree of popularity?

When I wrote my preface to the first edition of the Warshawsky songs, I decided
to play the prophet and predict that it wouldn't take long before those songs 
became genuine folk sungs [N. B., based on what they'd *become*, not how or
whence they originated], sung by Jews throughout the Diaspora.  I didn't know
that my prediction would achieve such proportions, that these songs would 
become the voice of a people so long as a Yiddish song was sung, nor did I
know that the name Warshawsky would be forgotten, as if nowhere in the
world a Warshawsky ever existed.


-- Robert Cohen, who delights in this sort of thing ...

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