Talk:Folk music

Contents

1 Folk rock?

2 Cynical remark

3 Skiffle?

13 Anglocentric Viewpoint

14 RiotFolk?

Folk rock?

Someone wrote:
More recognizable, perhaps, is a type of what is generally called rock and roll called [folk rock]? or simply "folk," which included performers such as [Joan Baez]?, Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, [The Mamas and the Papas]?, and many others.

I've tried to clarify this. "Folk rock" is used very specifically and is typically far more recognised by instrumentation than form. Many folk musicians of the 60s (Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs etc) sang new, topical material (which distinguished them from traditional folk musicians) but in the folk idiom (acoustic instruments, traditional arrangements and often traditional melodies.)

Re: the comment about "marketers" in the first paragraph. If language reflects common usage, what is now called "folk music" has as much right to the name as any other form.
Gareth Owen

To the latter: fair enough, but does the first paragraph actually imply otherwise? --LMS

Cynical remark

I like the page in general but wonder if the following is unnecessarily cynical (implying, as it does, a financial rather than artistic incentive to change musical styles):

"Some of these performers, of which Joan Baez is an excellent example, began their commercial music careers performing traditional music in a traditional idiom, but soon transformed their style and accompaniment to suit popular tastes."

Ya know, I agree, but I don't know how to change it right off. Anyone else want to give it a stab? --LMS

The deletions are merely of things that seemed redundant. Additions may solve the problem of tone mentioned above. One bit of the original puzzles me, so I corrected the grammar but left it in--but what does "unrecognizable to its source" actually mean?

I like the new additions--lots of good new information here. I added some more. The problem now is that the article is rambling and disorganized, and I am probably not the best person to organize and clarify it. BTW, using the word "purist," without the quotes, makes it sound as if the authors of the article are not purists, which we don't want to imply. :-) See neutral point of view. --LMS

Skiffle?

Perhaps someone who knows the facts :-) could add in "Skiffle" music, from whence the Beatles sprang, which was evidently a British folk form in the 1950's. Certainly the Beatles stole (er, utilised!) many folk forms in their music.

I think we are going to need a List of folk musicians at some point soon. user:sjc

POV

This page is ridiculous. I agree with the POV, but it is still a clear and obvious POV. I'm not sure how to fix it right now, but I will and come back. Tokerboy 09:00 Jan 18, 2003 (UTC)

Article is getting long so I put in section headings; also a little bit on the classical composers who went folksong collecting. Sorry about the clash of prose styles.

Opus33 21:20, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Old list

I removed the following list of folk styles, because I think it's too highly debatable to include without annotation. Maybe it could be moved to List of genres of folk music or something, but I'm not sure of the value of such a thing given the lack of any terribly agreeable definition of folk music. Tuf-Kat 20:41, Dec 19, 2003 (UTC)

"horses" remark

Is there any citation for the remark attributed to Louis Armstrong? I believe I've heard pretty much the same attributed to Bill Broonzy and I bet this obvious joke was made more than once. If it is there as a direct quote, it should be cited, otherwise at least it should be worded as an indirect quote. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:35, Oct 25, 2004 (UTC)

For what it's worth, a quickie Google search found:

http://www.saidwhat.co.uk/quotes/l/louis_armstrong_937.php

On the other hand, I'm not really that crazy about having the quote in there at all; back when I was editing this page, I left it in simply as a courtesy to a previous editor. It's perhaps useful as a way of illustrating different attitudes about what folk music is, but I'd prefer to emphasize the view of people (scholars) who've studied it seriously. If you'd like to just take it out, Jmabel, it would be fine with me. Opus33 22:08, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Here's a citation for Broonzy saying this: [1] (http://www.folkproject.org/fp_folkTV.html), probably from a better source than a generic "quotes" site. And another: Michael Cooney, citing it here, is a pretty solid folk-revival musician himself (although he misspells "Studs Terkel"): [2] (http://www.michaelcooney.com/MC1P013.html). Another site says it's attributed variously to Big Bill Broonzy, Woody Guthrie and Igor Stravinsky. [3] (http://www.bsmusic.com/FolkPage.html). Someone could probably do a pretty good article on the history of this quotation. I think I'll keep the quote in the article, use a better wording of it than the one there right now, and indicate how unclear it is who said it. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:49, Oct 25, 2004 (UTC)

"Many feel"

In the section "Variation in folk music" the phrase "Many feel..." begs for some citations. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:05, Oct 25, 2004 (UTC)

It certainly does. Please give me a few days, I need to get the references from a library. Opus33 00:18, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Horses again

I feel that the horse passage is really landing us in a muddle--we've got Igor Stravinsky as a popular musician now, which surely isn't right. The passage adds a lot to length, and it's not helping readers to understand folk music. So I excised, hoping not to elicit rage (or reversion)...

I'm intrigued that the saying has been attributed to so many people, and think it might be worth installing elsewhere--say, in the Louis Armstrong article, or in Wikiquote?

On another front, I pondered, and decided that the "Many feel..." passage is utterly POV and should go, too. Opus33 05:42, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the removed paragraph (as I had left it, but with one further edit -- I had missed that misplaced word "popular") reads:

Louis Armstrong, Bill Broonzy, Woody Guthrie and Igor Stravinsky have all been credited saying that all music is "folk" music: as Broonzy is claimed to have said to [[Studs Terkel, "I never heard no horses sing none of it!" [4] (http://www.saidwhat.co.uk/quotes/l/louis_armstrong_937.php), [5] (http://www.michaelcooney.com/MC1P013.html), [6] (http://www.bsmusic.com/FolkPage.html) This emphasizes the universality of people's love for music (which folk music also attests), but it also misses a distinction. Stravinsky, of course was a classical musician. Armstrong was a gifted performer within a sophisticated music tradition, which by his time had evolved to be very different from its folk origins. Broonzy and Guthrie were also professional musicians, albeit both with strong folk roots.

Probably doesn't belong in this article, perfectly glad to be rid of it. Wikiquote might be a good place for an extended version of this. Surely not in the Louis Armstrong article: I'd venture that he is one of the least likely of the people to whom it is attributed. My vote would be for Broonzy; Studs Terkel is still alive, so someone just might be able to get confirmation of that from the horse's mouth, so to speak. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:59, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)

The Singers' Club

"the Singers' Club and was the first, as well as the most enduring, of what became known as folk clubs" Neither the first (Newcastle's folk club began in 1953) nor the most enduring (it closed its doors in 1991). The Troubabor lives on, as does Edinburgh's Sandy Bell's.

The Singers' Club (as the "the Ballads and Blues Club") was also 1953. [7] (http://www.pegseeger.com/html/ewanmedshortbio.html) Any particular basis for claiming that the Newcastle club started earlier in the year?
"Troubabor": I assume that's "The Troubador"? Yes, that was founded in 1954 and would now be far older than the Singers' Club ever got to be. Has it been in continuous operation? If not, with what degree of interruptions? Anyway, you should edit the article accordingly. Probably the Singers' Club should still be mentioned for its uncommon purity of concept (it was an acoustically good room with no amplification at all). -- Jmabel | Talk 09:07, Nov 5, 2004 (UTC)

Gundula Krause

Is Gundula Krause well-enough known to merit mention in this article? I will readily admit to never before having heard of her. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:41, Jan 15, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, in Germany she´s wellknown under the name "göttliche Teufelsgeigerin" (divine fiddler of devil). Audax 12:08, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

References

Anyone know why in "References", Charles Seeger is a sub-section of Richard Middleton - or is this just a formatting error? -- SGBailey 22:19, 2005 Feb 6 (UTC)

Seeger is cited in Middleton, I've never seen nor touched the Seeger book. Hyacinth 04:29, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Traditional music

I have redirected traditional music here, and added a paragraph on the term (please clean up the paragraph -- I can't think of a more graceful way to explain it). See talk:traditional music. Tuf-Kat 21:45, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

Anglocentric Viewpoint

Since both ethnic music and traditional music redirect here, this article ought to be written from a culture-neutral point of view. As it is, nearly all the examples are from the American/English/Irish traditions only.

Especially without the list of folk styles (above), the whole article gives the impression that folk music applies to certain cultures only, which is lamentable.

Maybe a "folk music around the world" section would be in order? I'd also love to see "foreign" examples mixed in with the existing ones in the rest of the article also. --CodeGeneratR 18:57, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I tend to think this article should be mostly generic, meaning that it should just discuss what separates folk music from popular or classical music; this will, of course, require using a few examples, which should probably come from a variety of regions. Trying to explain any individual kind of folk music here is a bad idea, because it would not really be neutral to only explain some kinds (even a balanced description of one Western European style, one East Asian style, etc, would still be ignoring many other kinds). It would be better to keep this article generic and have a link to an appropriate page for someone looking for a specific kind of folk music (I've been working on User:TUF-KAT/List of genres of music by region, which would be a good pointer once it's complete). However, I should also note that most English-speaking people probably don't use the term folk music very precisely, and may come here looking for information on folk-rock or singer-songwriter or something else, and we should make it easy for those people to find a more appropriate article. Tuf-Kat 20:58, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)

RiotFolk?

Is RiotFolk really of enough significance to merit a mention in a general article about folk music? -- Jmabel | Talk 16:31, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC)

it should probably be moved to see also. --Buridan 17:19, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

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