Traditional Folk Songs Research Articles

Techniques of Blues Composition among Black Folksingers

ANYONE FAMILIAR WITH AMERICAN FOLKSONG knows there are a number of basic differences between Anglo-American and Afro-American traditions, despite more than three centuries of contact and musical interaction between blacks and whites in this country. These differences are due in part to separate and musical heritages from Great Britain and from Africa, as well as to American pattern of social segregation, which has forced separate development (though not without many mutual influences) upon two groups. Newman I. White noted in 1928 that black tradition displayed three important attributes absent in white folksong tradition: black tradition emphasized improvisation (highly characteristic;... a trait), variation, and accumulative tendency.' Today, in accordance with more modern terminology, we would probably change White's characterization of improvisation as a racial trait to a cultural trait. He later states that it is the continuation of a habit brought from Africa.2 The statement that cumulative tendency is characterized by fishing stanzas out of a spacious but none too accurate or discriminating folk memory must not go unchallenged, however. Although a cumulative tendency is found in many black folksongs, White has committed error of judging black folksongs by standards of white tradition, which emphasizes memorization of songs by their singers. The inevitable result of such judgment is a negative assessment of black tradition.

Hear These Beautiful Sacred Selections

Few pioneering works on American culture are as significant as George Pullen Jackson's White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands: The Story of the Fasola Folk, Their Songs, Singings, and “Buckwheat Notes” (1933). To this seminal book Jackson added four others, which fixed his name as the key interpreter of the Anglo-American religious folksong tradition within the United States. In White Spirituals Jackson set for himself a large and ambitious goal: to define and study a corpus not previously recognized as folksong by orthodox ballad scholars. In the process, he added to our understanding of the tune-family concept and helped to establish a multi-faceted model of folk society identified by geography, institutional structure, and philosophic belief.

Traditional Folksong and “Folklore” Singers

It is said that folk song is dead. And if under folk song we understand what Gottfried Herder, the creator of this word, had in mind, then this may be applied at least to large parts of Europe. Herder called folk songs “the true, veritable, characteristic songs of a people,” and made a clear distinction between street ballads, art songs, and the popular products of the educated classes. Even if one sees in real folk song, as did Béla Bartók, only the songs of tradition, that is, those songs transmitted orally among the less educated classes (as especially among the peasantry in former times), and if one acknowledges only that product as being real folk song which adapts a new form when transmitted from generation to generation, then we can well assert that this true folk song no longer exists, at least with us. We should not however think of the peasantry as the sole class who cultivated folk song, as Bartók did. Folk song has flourished at all times, even within the compass of urban civilization. In former times, as today, it was created there and was then picked up and transmitted by the country folk.

Multiple Pitch Lines in Yoruba Choral Music

The occurrence of polyphony in Yoruba choral music is significant for many reasons. First, it is almost entirely absent in traditional folk songs and is probably restricted to a small section of the Yoruba community. Secondly, in recent years polyphonic singing has become one of the essential features of a type of popular music, known among the Yoruba as juju. Although this form of music is fairly well distributed geographically, it is perhaps unique in popular folksong in its use of polyphony. It also differs from traditional polyphonic song in that it can be more easily identified with Western influences.

The Institute of Choreology

its own, highly distinctive feature: (1) the emigrant songs, the content of which is of socio-historical significance; (2) the comic, macaronic songs which constitute the immigrant folksong cycle par excellence; (3) the ritual folksong which is highly conservative and which either resists Canadianization or undergoes a drastic change in content, style or function. Some of the above research was incorporated into two papers which were presented this past summer: The Case for Slavic Folklore in Canada, First National Conference on Canadian Slavs, June 10, Banff, Alberta; The Investigation of the Ukrainian Folksong Tradition in Canada-Past and Present, Canadian Folk Music Society, Stanley House Conference, September 1, Quebec.

Three American Authors as Semi-Folk Artists

THE MATERIAL the folk artist uses is completely assimilated in his mind and culture. His is not the casual memory of forbidden anecdotes at a party, but a drawing from a fund of knowledge integrated with his community life. This is Kenneth S. Goldstein's Scottish painter whose horses bear the simplicity of their artist's simple life, but show the unmistakable mark of their creator; this is Abraham Oregon Smith, teller of tales and hero in many others, or Tom Scroggums, Brown County, Indiana, strong-man who told such tales as the miraculous hunt or the broad-antlered deer running through virgin timber; or it is my northern Indiana informant who without a blush tells obscene anecdotes which express an attitude toward life which is simple, often-times naive, and almost always charming. In these examples the concept of the folk artist is indeed broad because of the failures of our definitions. The difficulty may be clearly seen by examining music, a field in which there are two separate and distinct artistic functions: the creation and the performance. The composer writes music based upon ideas which are within his cultural milieu. This is true, I believe, even of the innovator who brings forth what seems to be a totally new concept. The performer, if only because of our notational system and the freedom it allows, re-creates each time he plays a piece of music. That is, he is forced to analyze and determine how a work should sound, and in many cases he has almost as much to say about the finished product as the composer. The performer also draws upon his cultural background for assistance. Most important, both the composer and performer are artists, individual but complementary. The anonymity which is almost-but not quite-a prerequisite for folk creation hampers one from seeing the essential relationship between the creator and performer. In terms of Mdrchen, proverb, riddle, traditional folksong and the like, time has hidden the Purcells and Miltons who created these works, although we can examine the Woody Guthries who write songs which are fast becoming traditional among our contemporaries. No one who has observed an accomplished folk-artist-singer, visual artist, or raconteur-can doubt that he is watching an artist in every sense of the word. My northern Indiana informant is a study in pure drama as she tosses her head to show disdain, uses a falsetto voice to identify a homosexual, twirls her fingers by her face to demonstrate the dangling earrings and heavy lipstick worn by a prostitute. Or a Brown County, Indiana, informant who, finding an appreciative audience, tells tall tale after tale in which he is the hero.

Traditional Folk Songs of Japan

Traditional Folk Songs of Japan

On the Minor Race People in China

In China there live some 35, 000, 000 (or 35 million) minor race people. They occupy only 60.6% of the total Chinese population. Yet the total area they occupy is 50% of the land, frontier regeons being included.In the past these minor races were incessantly oppressed by the Chinese (Hans) that have absolute majority in population and predominating economical power. And there were some minor races in the North-Western area that turned their back to China Proper. The minor races that inhabited the South-Eastern mountain range were separted into small groups, driven into the mountains by the Hans that (historically) toward the South, and led a primitive life isolated from the outer world. One can sea Shin-chang as an example of such region. This area was once a Chinese domain. Howevr, it was independent from China except at the times of strong dynasties.At the close of the 19th century when Ching Dynasty grew weaker, they were exposed to Russian influence on the north and British (influence) on the south. And until People's Republic of China was formed, they had been only a nominal domain of China; They independently formed diplomatic and economic connections with Russia, and it was much easier for them to go to Russia than to China Proper. However, there have occurred great changes during recent 10 years. Not only roads but also railways are under construction that connect them with China in many ways. It is somewhat similar to the relation between the Soviet Middle Asia and Russia.Roads and railways are being steadily built in the southeastern mountainous region. As various resources deposited here are developed, the policy is taken to make better the living standard of the races living here. China gives letters to the races that have no letters and propagates the songs that praise Peking by means of their traditional folk songs and folk dances. It is somewhat similar to the relation between the Soviet Polar Regins and Russia.Besides these, Mohammedans are regarded as one nation. This is because, although they speak Chinese, their manners and customes that their religion produced build up a unique social system. The Chinese esteem such uniqueness and activate their traditional activities, while they made an autonomous region on the northwest and are trying to move the Mohammedans living in big cities to this region in order to develop this underdeveloped region. Isn't this similar to Jews' Autonomous Region in the Soviet Union?Now the Chinese do not compulsorily adapt minor races to their way of life, which they used to do in the past. At present they esteem their autonomy. The Chinese need their cooperation in order to make the Chinese domain a strongly unified body, to make the border lines clear that used to be obscure, and to develop the People's Republic of China.Gradwally the social orders of People's China will covre the whole domain.

Traditional Folk Songs Available on Commercial Phonograph Records

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REVIEWS OF BOOKS

REVIEWS OF BOOKS Get access The New Green Mountain Songster: Traditional Folksongs of Vermont. Collected, Transcribed and Edited by Helen Hartness Flanders, Elizabeth Flanders Ballard, George Brown and Phillips Barry. pp. 278. ( Yale University Press; Oxford University Press, 1939.)20s. F. H. F. H. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Music and Letters, Volume XXI, Issue 2, April 1940, Pages 188–189, https://doi.org/10.1093/ml/XXI.2.188 Published: 01 April 1940