Click images for larger size.
Printed with Warren's permission - www.warrenfahey.com.au
Trad&Now - June-July 2006 pp 8 - 12
Some Observations on Australian Folk Song and Music - and the use of necessary labelsThe study of any national music is a “work in progress” and, after more than thirty-five years of being “involved”, my interpretation of what constitutes Australian folk music has changed considerably.
Firstly, allow me to say that I am not at all comfortable with “folk music” and “traditional” being descriptions of the music that has fascinated me for most of my life.
I reluctantly use them because there are no other commonplace and sensible descriptions.
This article is an exploration of how we use those descriptions.
It’s food for Trad&Now thought.
“Folk music” has become such a debased term, especially in a young country like Australia.
It has connotations of dairymaids frolicking in the new-mown hay and bold knights bashing the tripe out of each other. Such songs, of course, to be sung with a reverend bow of the head and a finger in the ear.
Worse still, it has never really escaped from the treatment it received in the 1950’s international revival of interest, and especially after becoming a commercial genre for the music industry.
It has become a stereotype representing the confusion. “Traditional music” in essence means music that has been passed down in a community, usually by oral transmission, and is part of that community’s cultural fabric.
Of course this did apply to some music in the Australian story, bushranger ballads are a good example, however that chain was broken a long time ago.
Some music is still passed on by oral transmission, children’s skipping rhymes, bawdy songs and political parodies being living examples.
“World Music” is another popular descriptive however it is a rather meaningless word and one that spread by the need to describe folk-related fusion and differentiate such music from traditional and folk.
“Traditional music” has its own use problem since it is primarily used to describe the music of so-called “primitive” societies.
The Pygmy people make traditional music, the Enga and Chimbu of Papua New Guinea play traditional instruments, and so on.
I am, of course, referring to preconceptions of music and ownership and our need to neatly package things under a label.
In truth it is virtually impossible to come up with a satisfactory answer to the name-calling problem because traditional music, and its related music, has entered into the popular music arena.
Maybe it is not a “real” problem since those genuinely involved in the transmission of traditional music are not normally conscious of its boundaries, nor should they be.
The dilemma is the way “folk” and “traditional” have been assumed by the “folk movement”.
This too has been an unconscious and natural assumption that dates back to the early I950s when British and American performers started to refer to themselves as “folk singers”.
Some of the other descriptive words (like Songfest, Hootenanny and Hullabaloo) from that period have (thankfully) disappeared.
There is little doubt that Australian enthusiasts for this type of music were influenced by American and British examples and we had hootenannies along with the best of them!
Interestingly, the so-called “folk revival” was predominantly steered by musicians and organisers of a left-wing political stance, many of whom would usually resist looking to American examples as a matter of principle.
One then needs to factor in the extraordinary influence of singers like The Weavers, Paul Robeson, Peggy Seeger, Ewan MacCoIl, Pete Seeger and A.L.Lloyd, all of whom passionately combined their politics and music under the flag of “folk music”.
All of these artists, except The Weavers, visited Australia.
I had several conversations with MacColl, both Seegers, Lloyd and also Alan Lomax about this assumption of title.
Every one of them said it was a conscious decision to take the music into a popular realm, back to its rightful owners, the “folk”.
They struggled with what to call themselves believing that they were not really, in the strict sense of the word, “of the folk tradition” but were certainly “of the folk”.
All admitted to an uncomfortable acceptance of the use of “folksinger” however both Lloyd and MacCoIl said they would not usually refer to traditional singers as “folk singer”, preferring to call them “traditional singers” or “singers of folk songs”.
This is an important distinction.
Certainly none of the people I have recorded have referred to themselves as “folk singer” or “traditional singer” arid the usual reference was “singer of old songs” and, in a couple of instances, “bush songs”.
The folk revival was an international revival of interest in the “old music” be it old British ballads, Irish lullabies, Negro Spirituals or back-mountain music, to name a handful of expressions.
Just as rock and roll came out of a boisterous interpretation of hillbilly country music, folk music looked to its more obvious roots.
Over the years there have been more discussions on “what is folk music?” than you can poke a stick at, the arguments continue.
Before “folk music” came into popular use, traditional music was referred to as “national” or “ethnic” music.
Once again, like “world music”, they are unsatisfactory descriptions.
In Australia, up until 1975 mainstream record stores like Nicholson’s, Palings and Myers, sold traditional music, including American, Celtic and British recordings, under “Ethnic Music” rack headers and, in some stores, there were headers for “Folk Music”.
Some stores preferred to simply label their recordings as ‘International”, possibly reflecting the then popular traditional-music - meets-cocktail-music recordings of artists like Klaus Wunderlich or The Mitch Miller Singers.
Australia’s folk revival was certainly influenced by singers and organizers who came from the left of politics and the Eureka Youth League and similar socialist groups were active in using folk song as a rallying point.
Most of our leading pioneer folklore collectors and observers, like John Meredith, Norm O’Connor, John Manifold, Wendy Lowenstein, Shirley Andrews and Russel Ward had definite socialist histories.
Many singers too, including Gary Shearston, Alex Hood, Chris Kempster, Don Henderson, Declan Affley and Marion Henderson were proudly political.
I mention these names with the understanding that many of today’s organisers, observers and performers would also identify with the left, myself included.
Mind you, what the hell is “the left” these days?
There’s not much of ‘the left” left.
I would make the point that all of the above and many of today’s brigade were passionate about Australian music above all other music streams.
In most cases their interest was specifically in Australian “bush” music.
Whilst I am tearing name calling apart I have to say something about the description “bush music”.
It’s not that satisfactory either, but more about that later.
The pioneers of the folk revival in Australia had little choice but to adopt “folk music” as a popular name since, in the 1950s, radio had begun to introduce the music they were playing as “folk music” with little regard to its cultural roots.
Television arrived in the mid fifties and it too promoted folk music as a popular music.
Likewise the records of artists like Shirley Abicar (and her autoharp), Burl Ives, The Weavers, The Kingston trio, the Brothers Four etc were introduced by the convenient “folk music” moniker.
As the folk revival gained steam “folk clubs” like “the Folk Attic” and “Folk City” (Kings Cross) and “The Troubadour” (Newtown) opened their doors to thousands of duffel-coat wearing “folkies” (Argh! That word!) advertising “Folk Singalongs”, “Folksters” and “Folk’d Out”.
Local singers released albums with folk-inspired titles like “Folk Song Today” and “Folk On Campus”.
Along with the revival of interest (revived from what? you might ask) in the music of the “folk” came an interest in writing new songs about the “folk” and their “folkie lives”.
Some of these songs were truly inspired and some truly awful.
There were songs about “blue-tailed flies”, rolling rivers and just about anything you could “folk a stick at”.
Many of the leading performers were looked on as musical heroes as fans hung on every word they sang; such is the fickleness of the popular music industry.
Thankfully, some of our performers had talent as songwriters and some classic contemporary songs emerged and were popularised.
Some songs served their purpose in time such as Don Henderson’s “Put a Light in Every Country Window” or “The Basic Wage Dream” and have virtually disappeared.
More about this type of contemporary “folk” song later.
Many of the songwriters attempted to compose songs about the past, possibly inspired by the success of “Tom Dooley”.
One has to question the emergence of pastiche, where songs are written about the past.
Hey, wasn’t it swell being a jolly old shearer??
This is especially galling to collectors who would suggest that there are already a lot of songs about shearers, many of them hardly ever sung at all.
I know this annoyed John Meredith, and Ron Edwards also finds it peculiar.
As the revival started to subside, it left a fragmented “folk movement”.
Most of the established venues had closed from lack of interest.
Folk City, for example, had already moved on to become “Surf City”, once again showing the fickleness of the popular music industry.
As the folk loyalists shook their heads, a new revival started led by some dedicated singers and fans.
These were mainly British migrants who had experienced their own revival that had been more serious, geographically more focused and more culturally based than the American version.
I would suggest that Australia’s early revival was more influenced by the American example than the British however that is not to detract from the overall influence of the British revival here.
These migrants and locals took folk music by the hand and started new clubs, mainly in hotels, where they could control the social environment, and also laid the foundations for annual festivals and state folk federations
Initially a large proportion of musical repertoire at these clubs and festivals was “traditional” music and especially music from the British Isles and Ireland.
Performers were called “folksingers” and, at the time, were mainly singing “folk songs”.
Many of the clubs only allowed traditional songs to be performed, possibly echoing the strict policy of clubs like Ewan MacColl’s “Singer’s Club”, in London.
Other types of clubs were established to cater for people who wished to hear songwriters, blues and other marginalised music.
In Sydney, Pact Folk was successful in that direction.
Year by year the musical mix of the “folk clubs” changed to allow other forms of music however it was a gradual change fiercely monitored by the “folk mafia”.
Discussions at national festivals were particularly heated as die-hards steamed and stomped.
This protectionist policy was most probably a necessity considering the damage suffered in the past.
Australian traditional music was considered an appropriate partner for the traditional repertoire of most folk clubs however there was little to there be heard, especially since respected artists like Gary Shearston and Marion Henderson had “moved on”.
A word here about “bush music”. I would say that the main public custodian of bush music has been the Bush Music Club, based in Sydney, especially if one factors in the dominant role of the late John Meredith.
The Club has been more of a movement than a club and, because of its single-mindedness; it has been successful in isolating itself from the main flow of the folk revival.
This is not to say they are isolationist for that would be far from the truth.
What this small, dedicated band of enthusiasts has done is successfully brand themselves and the music they favour.
For one thing they have never considered calling themselves the Bush Folk Music Club.
Their use of the word “bush” to describe what are mostly “colonial” songs and nineteenth century country dance music, appears to date back to the early 1950s, possibly before the international folk revival arrived.
By comparison their southern counterparts called themselves The Victorian Folk Song and Dance Club which, I should imagine, was detrimental to their overall aims of promoting bush traditions.
Certainly writers such as Henry Lawson and AB Paterson recognised there was a “music from the bush and Paterson, in his pioneering 1905 work that successfully brought many of the old songs together, called his collection “Old Bush Songs”.
He did not make reference to them as “folk songs”.
The word “bush” has been applied to many things and, in truth, it works well as a convenient description of the songs and music that came from the bush.
It is far better than say “colonial music” for it carries with it a particular and evocative flavour that is definitely Australian.
I for one am grateful our traditional music is not referred to as “folk music”, especially since, when I started my journey in the early sixties, it was commonly believed that our music was little more than “Celtic and British music that had been brought over by ‘the convicts’.
In some quarters “bush music” is still referred to as “folk music” and this possibly has something to with the early education system that “used” folk songs as play-dough.
I suspect the revival is also guilty of propagating the generalised use of “folk music” so it conveniently applies to all and sundry.
Maybe they are the worst offenders? I certainly believe the revival has unconsciously done disservice to our traditionaI music and, once again, without realizing it they have placed it as just another card in the deck.
Maybe I am being too protectionist here?
As I see it, the various folk organizations, mostly branded as “folk federations”, folk radio broadcasters and the national Folk Alliance, all have a very mixed and confusing musical agenda.
Look at the Folk Alliance and its major activities of a national forum and regular newsletter.
I accept it is all well meaning and we should all be extremely grateful for all the hard-working individuals that make so much happen but what is the focus?
It certainly isn’t the promotion and development of bush music” or whatever desription we choose to brand the music that truly represents our cultural heritage.
The Folk Alliance, once again using it as the “whipping post”, appears to have an agenda to service ALL areas of music that can loosely fall under the umbrella of “folk music”.
This, of course, is representative of the musical genres that one can find at most “folk festivals” in Australia.
What a mix! and all highly legitimate music expressions: blues, bluegrass, old timey, country swing, a capella choirs, “world”, country, comedy, jazz, jug, Celtic, and, dare I say it? soft pop, to name only a handful.
You could add storytelling, puppetry, kid’s clowns, “alternative” circus and face-painting too.
I am NOT saying this is a bad thing but it certainly is a confusing thing!
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a Folk Alliance to represent all these art forms but what does it say about the use of the word “folk” and how does its use affect our own “folk” or ‘traditional” music?
A flick through the Folk Alliance newsletters will show extraordinary variety but, maybe not surprisingly, little reference to what I would call Australian folk music, i.e. the music that comes from our Australian experience.
This no doubt reflects the membership of the Alliance and isn’t some fiendish plot to supplant our heritage with other music.
Mention must also be given to the only national “folk” magazine, Trad&Now, established by Dave de Santi, now under new and brave ownership.
This magazine also attempts to be all things to all music and, most probably, a mixed swag is what the readership wants.
The National Folk Festival, staged every Easter in Canberra is another case in point.
This grew out of the post-revival revival and has proved to be a very successful formula and major tourist attraction.
Its programming, obviously labeled “folk”, is certainly eclectic and echoes the interests of the Folk Alliance however, thankfully, it has always seen itself with a responsibility to promote a healthy program of (this is where I start to scratch for a suitable description), (Please select word of your choice) Australian Folk/Bush/Colonial/Traditional Music.
Let’s look at the performance side of the current folk revival and, in particular, the interpretation of what we could consider Australian.
I am avoiding using verbs like “real” as I feel this denigrates performers of folk-related arts.
For the sake of the exercise I will employ “bush music” as the appropriate description.
The main interpreters are bush bands, solo artists and other multiples who are not comfortable being branded a “band”.
There are certainly a lot of bush bands however, most of them stick to the “folk top 20” and nearly all of them seem to write and sing recent compositions “in the folk idiom”.
I am not here to preach what these bands should perform but I often wonder when I come across such bands who play the old bush songs, usually at a hundred miles an hour and then break into “The Unicorn” or some other inane song.
Many bands also play what has become known as “bush music” for dancing.
This is a hybrid and most enjoyable music that ranges from old time to frantic Celtic-flavoured, and usually quite sympathetic to the tradition.
Solo artists, obviously, are entitled to sing whatever they want however I also feel that interpreters of Australian bush music have a responsibility to place their material in perspective.
There are outstanding performers who do this but we could do with a lot more, especially those prepared to dig into the available collected resources.
Songwriters who sing their own songs are not technically “folk singers” however it is not their fault if they are given or even assume that label.
One could argue that some songwriters are closer to the folk tradition than others; Eric Bogle, Gary Shearston and Enda Kenny being closer than say Jigzag, Mary May Gill or The Waifs, but this would be a pointless and frustrating argument.
I certainly believe that songs written in the folk style (whatever that is) can be very effective and entertaining but, once again, labelling them simply as “folk songs” sends out a very confusing message to an already confused audience.
As a singer of both bush and contemporary songs I have had to confront this demon for decades.
I have no problem referring to my “traditional” repertoire as “bush songs” and hardly ever describe them as “folk songs”, in fact I actively avoid that description.
I am comfortable with “traditional” too but when one considers I sing a lot of songs from the twentieth century it is further confusion.
Even more confusing is the fact that the authorship of many of my songs is known, even songs thought to be traditional.
When I sing a contemporary song, for example a Harry Robertson or John Dengate song, I refer to them as “songs written in the folk style” and, where possible, I try and explain how these songs are in the same tradition of many of the bush songs.
The ABC recently released two CDs of some of my early work: one of bush songs and another of songs from the city experience.
I titled the bush CD A Panorama Of Bush Songs and then struggled over the urban title before settling on Larrikins, Louts & Layabouts’: Folk Songs & Ditties From The City.
There! I had to succumb to the same old labelling of “folk songs”.
I didn’t think “traditional” worked for the city songs, especially since some of the material had attributed authors, and the use of “folk” in this situation seemed the most sympathetic tribute to the material.
There is also the major problem that a great slice of what we recognize as “traditional” folk music does not adhere to the accepted terms of the international definition.
Not that I would worry a “rats arse" over such semantics but it is another piece of the puzzle that should be mentioned.
I recently found a l880s commercially published songbook that included, almost word-for-word, some of the songs recorded from ‘traditional singer and musician” Simon McDonald, in the 1950s.
Simon, no doubt, wouldn’t have cared a “rats arse” either, and his repertoire is evidence to that perspective.
What about American minstrel songs that moved into our folk treasury?
What about songs where we have tracked the original songwriter like “The Overlanders” or “Broken Down Squatter”?
What about all those songs “arranged” by A.L..Lloyd that became Australian standards including his versions of “Maryborough Miner” or “Flash Jack From Gundagai”?
All food for thought but not to worry about!
.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
No comments:
Post a Comment