[78-L] "Folk" music...?!

[Barry Chern]

in a missive of 7/20/09, David Weiner was seen to expound:
>
>I think the whole idea of "true amateur" singing has all but disappeared...
>people simply CANNOT match the carefully-digitally-edited "music"
>heard to-day...?!

That's just what Pete Seeger said in the '30's. (well, not the 
'digital' part.) Slick radio pop stuff had taken over, people no 
longer made their own music. A movement had to be started. 
Hootenannies were created in New York City to introduce an ideal of 
rural rowdiness to those weird enough to embrace it. He also was 
involved in giving people the idea that a Folk Singer could also be a 
writer and performer. (It's just another sad instance of the marketed 
amnesia that has resulted in the current dichotomy.)

It is always at the slickest moments that people are driven to 'folk' 
music. Hence Elvis (referred to as a 'folk singer on his 2nd RCA 
album) in the mid-50's. And Harry Smith.

I've spent my whole life attracted to such things. But, the more I 
learn about it the more disabused I am of the romantic notions about 
anonymous bodies of music rising out of the collective unconscious of 
the people. In all those other countries, there were hundreds of 
years for it to sift down, and for the composers of the popular tunes 
that survived to be forgotten. Not to mention a clearly identifiable 
Classical Music with which to contrast it.

In America, the concept of folk music has always been a confusing and 
contentious one (even though we feel like we know it when we hear 
it.) There is no indigenous population, aside from the native 
americans. they have some american folk music. the rest is up for 
argument. An awful lot of the ballads and dance tunes that are truly 
identifiable as ancient and anon. are old-country imports, anyway. 
the whole idea of an American Folk Music was largely started in the 
1920's by Carl Sandburg and John Lomax (performer and collector 
respectively), and the things they were defining as folk were 
sometimes contemporary compositions. It was more about identification 
with certain classes and cultures.

The raw rural qualities that make some musics so attractive are often 
imparted by the artists, reshaping music that was slick popular song 
anywhere from 15 to 75 years earlier. (or less, in the case of Doc 
Boggs and Charley Patton covering records by 'classic' blues 
singers.) Charley Poole doing sentimental songs from sheet music, 
Uncle Dave Macon covering pop cylinders and minstrel songs. 
Leadbelly, likewise the minstrel songs and hillbilly records...

Of course, I don't really foresee punk Hootenanny revivalists of the 
future singing along on rousing versions of Jonas Brothers songs. 
But, one never knows.