An Aural Tradition with a Pause Button? The Role of Recording Technology in a North East English Folk Session

Abstract

F scholars of “folk” or “traditional” music, an understanding of the processes by which material is disseminated has been a central and definitive concern since the earliest identifications of the genre. Attempts to discover or list universal features shared by musics thus categorized have now largely given way to a widespread recognition that the terms’ meanings are multiple and context specific.1 Despite this recognition, however, the concept of oral transmission is one of few characteristics still regularly cited as a common (although, of course, not universal) feature of folk and traditional musics. Whether as an exclusive means to a music’s transmission (as implied by Oxford English Dictionary’s definition: “Folk music . . . is transmitted orally from generation to generation”; Hanks 1998:713) or to a music’s evolution (as in the International Folk Music Council’s Sao Paulo resolution: “the product of a musical tradition that has evolved through the process of oral transmission”; IFMC 1955:23), orality (or aurality, in the case of instrumental traditions) has in some cases played a significant role in musicians’ conceptualization of their music and culture. This is likely to be particularly significant where that music culture is identified in necessary contradistinction to a dominant performance culture that is based on notation literacy. The importance of an unwritten transmissive mode in distinguishing folk musics from art music in Euro-American society is a strong case in point. In this article, I shall examine the case of instrumental folk music sessions in North East England as an example of a music culture where the ongoing development of a musical tradition has involved