Talk:Traditional music

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Traditional music is within the scope of WikiProject Music, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to music. If you would like to participate, you can choose to edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.

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Contents 1 Differentiating Traditional and Folk music 2 Removal of redirect 3 Major changes to World, Folk, Roots, and Traditional music pages 4 Aural or Oral? 5 Makes little sense 6 Cleanup tag 7 Lack of copyright on songs 8 Non-commercial 9 Down with formalism

[edit] Differentiating Traditional and Folk music

I'm not sure about the existence of this article independent of folk music. It is true that folk is often used to refer to popularized forms of traditional music, but the same is true of traditional music. This article even notes the existence of Irish traditional music, which is a popularized version of Irish folk/traditional music. I'm not saying the distinction of the two meanings doesn't exist or is irrelevant, but I don't think "folk music" and "traditional music" is a useful way to separate them. Even accepting that traditional music is the orally-transmitted, non-pop form of music, the word traditional is, I think, loaded (so is folk, making the distinction unuseful); music evolves over time, and calling something traditional implies that it is more or less the same as it was before. I'm not sure if I'm making any sense, but I think this article should be redirected to folk music, since both terms are just as ambiguous and loaded. Tuf-Kat 22:53, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)

You're making sense and I support redirecting it. Nurg 07:26, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'll take the lack of opposing views as consensus then, and do it. Tuf-Kat 21:38, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

I've un-redirected them, and hopefully the pages themselves now explain the difference. -- TimNelson 11:12, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of redirect

After some discussion on my page on "Trad" it was decided that a page that seperates Traditional music from Folk Music was needed as some jazz music is classed as traditional as are a lot of blues standards and these are not folk.

At the minute, there is not much to the page, but I plan on expanding it soon.

See the discussion here

--Astral 16:49, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I must say I still disagree. The fact that some non-folk compositions are credited "traditional" does not warrant a page on the subject. What on earth is this article going to say? How could it be elaborated upon? The article on folk music, which needs a lot of work, ought to have a section comparing and contrasting folk, roots and traditional music, since all three times are mostly conflated but also used separately at times. Tuf-Kat 04:34, September 9, 2005 (UTC)

I also disagree. Most people consider these terms synonyms. In fact, I'd say that "traditional" is a made-up word by publishers meaning "we couldn't figure out who the composer was." Anyway, how do you know that blues and jazz are not folk music? —Wahoofive (talk) 16:45, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

I've redirected it again. Tuf-Kat 04:53, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Hello Tuf-Kat. I strongly disagree with the redirection of "traditional music" to "folk music"! A separate page on "traditional music" is needed. The term folk music is defined as meaning music made by common people, i.e. nonprofesional musicians. The word is in this sense often applied to African music although a lot of African music is not folk music in this sense. There are many forms of music performed by professional musicians. There is sacred music and courtly music and while these forms of music can be called traditional music, they are not folk music. So it is simply wrong to consider the two terms to mean the same. In older ethnomusical literature, the term folk music is often used, but in newer literature, the distinction is made, for good reasons. In the case of blues and jazz, the term folk music might be appropriate. In the case of Malian griot music or of Amadinda Xylophone music from Buganda it is certainly not. The same probably holds for music traditions from other parts of the world. Therefore (sorry) I'm planing to remove the redirect and make this an article again. Nannus 04:23, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

I disagree -- everything you said about folk music is just as true about traditional music. Unprofessional performers is just one characteristic of folk music -- all characteristics of folk music vary, it's not a strict definition. For example, folk music is composed by unknown individuals, but there are European folk traditions that include known composers, while many North American and Polynesian traditions have at least legendary composers for their songs. Even the most classic forms of folk music from Western Europe, like French folk, have included professional musicians. Furthermore, the term "traditional" has exactly the same problems -- it's used inconsistently and does not, in all senses, apply to African music. It implies a certain age to a style or technique, which is not always warranted or at least proven; it implies a lack of technological sophistication, which may or may not be applicable in certain cases; finally, I associate non-professional musicians just as much with "traditional" as with "folk"... I guess the ultimate problem is that, AFAIK, the two are not particularly commonly differentiated in any consistent way. Plenty of people use them synonymously or nearly so, or merely use one but not the other. Do you have a source that directly compares the terms? Tuf-Kat 11:11, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

To be clear, I agree that placing all non-recently imported African music into a "folk" category is inappropriate. Switching "folk" to "traditional" doesn't really solve the problem. We should be categorizing African music based on the most useful way to organize comprehensive information, which would probably require categories like "ceremonial" or "celebratory" or "ritual" or whatever. Tuf-Kat 03:21, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

That is what I mean. I hesitate to use the word "folk" when taling about music that has a function within the framework of a traditional culture. If you do so, and you don't want to give certain cultures, e.g. western culture, a special treatment, you would have to exclude such music from the category "folk". Otherwise, you would have to include things like curch music or the singing associated with Qur'an recitations in the folk category, which seems inappropriate. An example of a type of music I would not call folk is the songs of Australian Aborigines. This music is almost allways ritual. I would call it traditional, but not folk (although it is performed by "common people".

I am also not happy with the term folk for the following reasons: as far as I know (I don't have a reference on this right now but we should try to find one) the term folk goes back to "folklore" which in turn is derived from italia "folclore". This term, as far as I know, was coined during the renaicannse time in italy to distinguisch the "art music" of the courts of italian nobility from the music of the common people. This means: (1) the term is an intracultural distinction of european (western) culture and (2) right from the start the term had a connotation of inferiority. For (1), the predominant view in ethnomusicology today seems to be that musical cultures should, as far as possible, be described in their own (intracultural) terms, e.g. using terminology from a culture itself instead of concepts from another culture. Where transcultural concepts are used in order to compare different cultures, these concepts must be well defined and scientifically justified. I suspect that this was the reason that during the 1960s and 1970s, ethnomusicologists started using the term traditional music in favor of the term folk music. While these terms are interchangable in layman's use, I suspect that in the scientific literature there are attempts to define a new concept of "traditional music" to replace the term folk. I guess that the discussion we are having here can also be found in the scientific literature along simmilar lines. However, I am not so deep inside those matters myself. About (2), as a non nativ speaker of Englisch, I don't know how strong the negativ connotation of "folk" is in English. In German, the corresponding terms have a strong connotation of inferiority and therefore I would therefore avoid them when talking about nonwestern cultures. Maybe this is different in English (?).

(3) The professional/nonprofessional distinction is not the central point (see the Aborigine example), but If a kind of music requires a specialist education to be performed (like Griot Kora music, for example) I would also hesitate to call it folk. Such musical genres are better classified as art music (somthing like "classical African music"). Genarally, I admit that the distinctions are not very clear and so theses concepts are problematic. For example, where do you put Apala music? It is sometimes described as a genre of popular music, but in it's musical forms, it does not show a trace of western influence. One could just as well call it folk or "classical African music".

What we should try however is to look into the ethnomusical literature if there are (more) well defined concepts in the technical language. I don't insist on separating an article for "traditional music" but the discussion should be reflected in depth in the folk music article. Nannus 12:34, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Major changes to World, Folk, Roots, and Traditional music pages

Hi all. I think the pages for World music, Roots music, Folk music, and Traditional music need some changes. I've documented the ideas at Wikipedia:WikiProject World music/Definitions; if you could all respond on the talk page, that would be great!

-- TimNelson 04:58, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Aural or Oral?

The phrase "Aural tranmission" is not as useful as "Oral tradition" because (a) there is an article on "Oral tradition" and it would be nice to link into it (b) people can hear singers in the flesh but also over the radio, on televison or on CD. The latter is a new form of traditional music, and usually considered "not quite authentic". Can we have "Oral" (by mouth) rather than "Aural" (by ear)? I would do it myself, but I suspect controversy. Ogg 12:13, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree about that. My preference would be to use Oral tradition - that's how I've seen this written in most places. I suggest you be WP:BOLD and make the edit. If someone doesn't agree, they might revert it, but that's OK, we can continue the discussion.

"Aural tranmission" seems an awkward phrase to me and I've not seen it that way previously. If someone has references on this either way, please provide them. Thanks. --Parsifal _Hello 18:28, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Makes little sense

"Occasionally, collected traditional song versions include material or verses incorporated from different songs that makes little sense in its context.[citation needed]" I'm stuggling to find an example of this phenomenon. Sarah Cleveland (b 1905) is a respected traditional Irish-USA singer.Biography. Her version of "Let No Man steal Your Thyme" contains a mixture of another song - "Seeds of Love". Sarah's version. The result is slighty odd, but not nonsense. If nobody can find a better example, this might fit the bill. Ogg 17:49, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Nobody has come up with another example, so I have put in in. Ogg 14:55, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup tag

I added a clean up tag because I found the writing, especially in the opening section, to be very poor. There is too much use of bold. The itemized list is not standardized in capitalization or punctuation. The first sentence has the weasel words of 'a lot'. The language is too informal, i.e. "While this is not a bad thing. . .". A Softer Answer (talk) 23:04, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

I have rewritten the opening section, is a very simplified way. Ogg (talk) 14:48, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I find myself repeatedly having to defend the "narrow definition" of "traditional music" to replace what used to be called "folk music". The "wacklepedia" website defines traditional music as "Music which was created in this way (oral tradition) before the rise of mass communications and mass media".

• wacklepedia

Please bother to read my new article "World music terminology", and the wacklepedia artcile above rather than simply add the tag "{fact}" yet again. The facts are straightforward enough. Before radio and TV it's "folk music", afterwords such music is described as "traditional music". Just because popular parlance makes no such distinction, doesn't mean that the distinction is nonsense. By implication this means that "traditional music" is closed i.e. no new traditional folk songs can be written any more. Ogg (talk) 18:57, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lack of copyright on songs

The article suggests this as a only a side-effect. For what it may be worth, I would propose that a copyright would negate a song from ever being traditional. Only when it goes into the public domain and is able to change and become personalized to a certain region, people, situation, etc., can it be considered traditional. A citation supporting this view would be Norm Cohen who writes that unlike a popular or classical music, traditional folk songs change over time—"Variation or change, then, are hallmarks of traditional folk song"; p. xxiv, Cohen, Norm. "Folk Music: A Regional Exploration (Greenwood Guides to American Roots Music)". Greenwood Press, 2005. ISBN 0-313-32872-2 -- TestsPoint (talk) 02:50, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Non-commercial

A couple of citations from Norm Cohen's book (see above) may also be useful for this subject:

• p. xxii; "A more useful approach is to define folk music as the music that survives without complete dependence on commercial media."
• p. xxxviii. "Unlike a popular song or a work of elite music, though, a folk song did not die out when it was no longer commercial; ..."
  

-- TestsPoint (talk) 03:18, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Down with formalism

(a) The copyright issue

I disagree. Most baroque classical music is not copyright. Music copyright laws didn't become enforcable until the late nineteenth century. We must define traditional music by what it is, not by what it isn't. Copyright varies from country to country. In the UK the writer (and his estate) are entitled to copyright until 99 years after his death. Even to suggest that copyright is part of definition of folk music (as opposed to a side-affect) opens the door to the idea that punk and rap becoming eligible as folk music after the passage of 99 years. It suggests that the same song might be folk in one country and not in another, because of variation in laws.

(b) Variation

I disagree. The song "Fathom the Bowl" is always treated as traditional and yet the version now generally sung is identical to the earliest known printed version. Just because it failed to change, doesn't mean it can't be described as folk music. Beethoven wrote a cadenza to last section of the fifth piano concerto, but his earlier concertos have no cadenzas. i.e. in theory the pianist will decide what to play, by inventing his own variations. Does this make his first four concertos folk music? No. Is jazz folk? No.

(c) Non-commercial

I disagree. Let's face it, most classical music is non-commercial. Did anyone ever make a profit out of a work by Stockhausen? The printer, yes. The performers, not without a distored market. Massive subsidies by governments, arts councils and rich patrons enable such things to take place. Even the record/CD manufacturers struggle.

(d) Surviving without complete dependence on commercial media

I disagree. The classical music of India and China survived by being passed down from master to pupil, over hundreds of years. Is Indian classical music folk? no.

Instead I return to the real issues: local culture, rites-de-passages and seasonal events. Social binding and anthropology provide the keys to folk music, in much the same was as costume, dialect and choice of food are affected by those issues. A folk song celebrates victories, laments defeats, welcomes the arrival of spring, complains of social injustice and laughs at folly and pretentiousness. It binds together workers who share the same working conditions and youths who share the same pleasures of love, drink, gambling, dancing, hunting and sport. You are obsessed with formalism and you ignore the human heart. People may sing "Anarchy in the UK" in 100 years time, perhaps with new words, and without any profit motive, but it will never be folk music, because it does not bind a community together. Your formalist point of view has lots of academic support, but mine does not. You can provide lots of literary quotations, I cannot. Folk music documents the fate of a community and measures its pulse. Ogg (talk) 20:40, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

• I'm sorry, you'll have to be more plain spoken with me. I don't understand most of what you're trying to say. Most of what you say about social choices, celebrations, music of the heart, etc. applies to all music, including popular and classical. People pick and choose, and repeat music according to what they like or their peers like and what makes them feel whatever it is they want to feel. I've never heard anyone sing "Fathom the Bowl" so I have no opinion. To me it's just a dry old song written in archaic vernacular. I think folks sing folk songs and only folk-song singers sing historical relics. If folks choose to sing "Anarchy in the UK" (whatever that is) a hundred years from now, it will be a folk song. If it's only sung by scholars, then it's only of academic interest. But this is only my opinion and doesn't belong in an encyclopedia article. Again, I'm sorry. My education doesn't allow me to understand what you've said. TestsPoint (talk) 05:04, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

You seem to be suggesting that there is a difference between songs sung by "folks" and songs sung by scholars. Yes, that is a very popular opinion. The article "folk song" embraces that opinion, and that kind of popular song. However, this article isn't about that kind of song. This article is about the specialist narrow kind of music called "traditional music" - an academic historical subject, written about by scholars. This article isn't for you, and this kind of music isn't for you. This article is for scholars, singing dry old songs and historical relics. We like dry historical relics and dusty books. Go away. Don't bother us in our nice library and nice museum. Put you comments onto the "Folk music" article instead, not here. Ogg (talk) 18:33, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

• I didn't mean to get your goat, ma'am, and I sure don't mean to suggest anything. If this is the article that applies to songs like "On Top of Old Smoky", "La Cucaracha", or "Sir Patrick Spens"—songs popularly recited today but dating from an age that makes the authors virtually unknowable—then this is the one I mean. If this article applies to songs like "Blowin' in the Wind" or "Teach Your Children" (modern songs written in a folk-like manner), then you are right, this isn't what I want. In any case, everything in the article may be true, but in its current state it is disjointed, declarations aren't cited, and, as a whole, it's difficult to understand. I have no interest in a tar baby dust up, though, so I'll leave it to your good efforts. TestsPoint (talk) 00:47, 13 April 2008 (UTC)