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What are Folk songs all about?
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What are folk songs all about?
 | What Is Folk Song?
Music by the people, for the people. Were it as simple as that. One way of looking at it is that they are songs originated by individual, unsung, people. Another theory is that these songs should have achieved a wide popularity amongst a population. Or is it music orally passed on from one enthusiast to another that epitomizes what Folk music is all about. Then there is the Traditional verses Contemporary debate that adds another facet to the story. There are purists that would argue the case for any one of these, or perhaps a hybrid mixture of one or two.
I believe that a strong case can be made for saying that folk music has a story that has been moulded, has had pressures and exertions applied to it in its creation, be that by its creator or outside influences. Over time variation and selection encroach upon a work changing its character. A word is dropped here and there, a meaning misinterpreted, inflexion added at the wrong point, and each generation employs with hindsight deference to particular forms that distort original meaning. A cart becomes a handsome cab becomes a motor car becomes a jet aeroplane. This example may be a little far fetched but I think you get my general drift. Over the many years I have been creating songs and when I look back at how I sung them, written down in a book, and how I perform them at the present time they are very different.
The folk singer reproduces with the idea in mind of retaining a form, a shape, of a song, but not an exact copy of the original. Even when the song has been invented by yourself it depends on your mood and the response of an audience as to its delivery.
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Defining Folk Song
 | Defining folk song
Armenian folk musicians
"Folk song is usually seen as the authentic expression of a way of life now, past or about to disappear (or in some cases, to be preserved or somehow revived). Unfortunately, despite the assembly of an enormous body of work over some two centuries, there is still no unanimity on what folk music (or folklore, or the folk) 'is'" (Middleton 1990, p.127).
Gene Shay, co-founder and host of the Philadelphia Folk Festival, defined folk music in an April 2003 interview by saying: "In the strictest sense, it's music that is rarely written for profit. It's music that has endured and been passed down by oral tradition. [...] And folk music is participatory—you don't have to be a great musician to be a folk singer. [...] And finally, it brings a sense of community. It's the people's music."
The English term folk, which gained usage in the 18th century (during the Romantic period) to refer to peasants or non-literate peoples, is related to the German word Volk (meaning people or nation). The term is used to emphasize that folk music emerges spontaneously from communities of ordinary people. "As the complexity of social stratification and interaction became clearer and increased, various conditioning criteria, such as 'continuity', 'tradition', 'oral transmission', 'anonymity' and uncommercial origins, became more important than simple social categories themselves."
Charles Seeger (1980) describes three contemporary defining criteria of folk music (Middleton 1990, p.127-8):
A "schema comprising four musical types: 'primitive' or 'tribal'; 'elite' or 'art'; 'folk'; and 'popular'. Usually...folk music is associated with a lower class in societies which are culturally and socially stratified, that is, which have developed an elite, and possibly also a popular, musical culture." Cecil Sharp (1972), A.L. Lloyd ().
"Cultural processes rather than abstract musical types...continuity and oral transmission...seen as characterizing one side of a cultural dichotomy, the other side of which is found not only in the lower layers of feudal, capitalist and some oriental societies but also in 'primitive' societies and in parts of 'popular cultures'." Redfield (1947) and Dundes (1965).
Less prominent, "a rejection of rigid boundaries, preferring a conception, simply of varying practice within one field, that of 'music'."
David Harker (1985) argues that "folk music" is, in Peter van der Merwe's words, "a meaningless term invented by 'bourgeois' commentators". Jazz musician Louis Armstrong and blues musician Big Bill Broonzy have both been attributed the remark "All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song."
Subjects of folk music
Apart from instrumental music that forms a part of Narrative verse looms large in the folk music of many cultures. This encompasses such forms as traditional epic poetry, much of which was meant originally for oral performance, sometimes accompanied by instruments. Many epic poems of various cultures were pieced together from shorter pieces of traditional narrative verse, which explains their episodic structure and often:
eir in medias res plot developments. Other forms of traditional narrative verse relate the outcomes of battles and other tragedies or natural disasters. Sometimes, as in the triumphant Song of Deborah found in the Biblical Book of Judges, these songs celebrate victory. Laments for lost battles and wars, and the lives lost in them, are equally prominent in many folk traditions; these laments keep alive the cause for which the battle was fought. The narratives of folk songs often also remember folk heroes such as John Henry to Robin Hood. Some folk song narratives recall supernatural events or mysterious deaths.
Hymns and other forms of religious music are often of traditional and unknown origin. Western musical notation was originally created to preserve the lines of Gregorian chant, which before its invention was taught as an oral tradition in monastic communities. Folk songs such as Green grow the rushes, O present religious lore in a mnemonic form. In the Western world, Christmas carols and other traditional songs preserve religious lore in song form.
Other sorts of folk songs are less exalted. Work songs are composed; they frequently feature call and response structures, and are designed to enable the labourers who sing them to coordinate their efforts in accordance with the rhythms of the songs. In the armed forces, a lively tradition of jody calls are sung while soldiers are on the march. Professional sailors made use of a large body of sea shanties. Love poetry, often of a tragic or regretful nature, prominently figures in many folk traditions. Nursery rhymes and nonsense verse also are frequent subjects of folk songs.
Taken From pages of Wikipedia 01/6/06 |
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Subjects Of Folk Music
Subjects of folk music
Apart from instrumental music that forms a part of Narrative verse looms large in the folk music of many cultures. This encompasses such forms as traditional epic poetry, much of which was meant originally for oral performance, sometimes accompanied by instruments. Many epic poems of various cultures were pieced together from shorter pieces of traditional narrative verse, which explains their episodic structure and often:eir in medias res plot developments. Other forms of traditional narrative verse relate the outcomes of battles and other tragedies or natural disasters. Sometimes, as in the triumphant Song of Deborah found in the Biblical Book of Judges, these songs celebrate victory. Laments for lost battles and wars, and the lives lost in them, are equally prominent in many folk traditions; these laments keep alive the cause for which the battle was fought. The narratives of folk songs often also remember folk heroes such as John Henry to Robin Hood. Some folk song narratives recall supernatural events or mysterious deaths.
Hymns and other forms of religious music are often of traditional and unknown origin. Western musical notation was originally created to preserve the lines of Gregorian chant, which before its invention was taught as an oral tradition in monastic communities. Folk songs such as Green grow the rushes, O present religious lore in a mnemonic form. In the Western world, Christmas carols and other traditional songs preserve religious lore in song form.
Other sorts of folk songs are less exalted. Work songs are composed; they frequently feature call and response structures, and are designed to enable the labourers who sing them to coordinate their efforts in accordance with the rhythms of the songs. In the armed forces, a lively tradition of jody calls are sung while soldiers are on the march. Professional sailors made use of a large body of sea shanties. Love poetry, often of a tragic or regretful nature, prominently figures in many folk traditions. Nursery rhymes and nonsense verse also are frequent subjects of folk songs
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What is a Folk Song?
The International Folk Council (1955:23) provides the
following definition:
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 of the music by the
community that gives it its folk character.
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