Folk-Eh-Music
About folk music, its history and definitions
Introduction to folk music
Folk music is a keyword for educators and students at the Academy's folk music program, Folkekons. It is the core of the programme and what we have between our fingers every day, so we must know what the word covers.
Folk music - must simply be music for people. But what is music for people is probably music that people like, i.e. what is popular for people, i.e. popular music, pop music. But in common parlance, no one would claim that what is played on P3 is folk music. So the people whose music is folk music are probably not all the people. But
who are these people then? And on top of that, the English word "folk" is a genre in itself. Is the folk part of folk music or folk music part of the folk?
Many people also call folk music traditional music. Tradition - the short and quick answer is probably that tradition is something old. If it's only characterized by age, then it's everything that belongs in a museum that we deal with. And here most people probably disagree. Because tradition is also something living. But something
old and living at the same time sound like opposites? And who decides how old "old" should be? Or how alive "alive" is? But if it just has to be something alive, then it's .... everything.
In the folk music community, I find that we often talk past each other. I have been further encouraged to write this article after experiencing that the concepts in themselves can be used as a quality label. For example, it is often emphasized as a good thing if folk music is traditional. If it is not out of a tradition, it is not good and thus not worth dealing with. But in the same breath, there is no reflection on what tradition actually is.
It is not my intention to find "the current" definition of folk music, but I think there is a lack of a short, easy to read and understand, yet thorough review of where the word "folk music" comes from, what definitions exist and how society has influenced the definitions over time.
In my article, I have not dealt with definitions from other countries because of significant differences in social structure, infrastructure and history. I could also include the words traditional music or traditional music, but I have chosen to focus on folk music, as it is the word folk music that forms our headline for the Academy's folk music program.
"the Folk" is discovered
The "Folke-" (folk means people in danish) in the Danish word "folk music" dates back to the early 1800s. Back then it was hard to be Danish! In 1807 Copenhagen was bombed, in 1813 the state went bankrupt and in 1814 Norway had to surrender. The intellectuals wanted to help raise the people's sagging spirits, so NFS Grundtvig set out to translate Saxo's Chronicle into popular, oral Danish full of "dear Danish proverbs" to "awaken the spirit of the fathers to life". However, he quickly ran out of proverbs and in 1817 he invited Danes to submit common folk proverbs and sayings for his translations. This was the first Danish collection of "folk" anything, and part of a European trend.
And where did NFS get the idea of "folk culture" from? Then we have to rewind a bit:
At the end of the 18th century, Europe's ruling nobility was increasingly giving way to a growing middle class. As more and more upstarts entered the scene, good manners and "civilization" became an important mark of nobility, effectively excluding those who were not born into nobility.
The word "people" now began to be used politically and rhetorically. Inspired by the French philosopher Rousseau, German intellectuals attacked the outward elegance of the court and questioned their morality and justice and thus also the right of the nobility to rule. Instead, they highlighted the German "people", which they saw as bearing a special culture, more moral and just, based on inner qualities, as opposed to outer behavior and manners. The German philosopher Johann Gottfried Von Herder coined the term "Volkslied" (folk song) in 1773 and also "folk poetry" and "folk culture". Herder saw peoples as equals and the recognition of their uniqueness was a positive inspiration for understanding human values. He saw the people as an organism that creates coherence in history, and the later political nationalist approach was far removed from him.
In France, during the French Revolution (1789-99), "the people" became one of the bourgeoisie's main weapons against the royal house, its wastefulness and power. Popular freedom, popular power and popular government became words that spread across Europe. The ancient kingdoms were all composed of many population groups. Power rested on an ingenious division of labor between different peoples and groups under one king. But now people and nations were to be one and the same in a new kind of political and cultural entity,
the nation state. It was to be governed by representatives of the people in the form of bourgeois statesmen.
Owe Ronström writes in his article "Nationell musik? Peasant music?" from 1990 (here in my translation): "Who then were "the people"? The old Germanic word Volk had the basic meaning "a collective of some kind", but it also had several other and partly contradictory meanings. For some Romantics of the time, people was the same as the entire population within a certain area or language community, except king and nobility. People, nation and population became synonyms. Others distinguished between two or more different classes or social strata within a nation and therefore people were identified as the broad strata of society. For them, people equaled the common people, the peasantry, the populas".
Those who participated in the discovery of "the people" set out to seek the music of the people and found a great treasure of dance tunes and songs that no one knew who had created them. The people did not know the authors and did not appreciate the knowledge of them. The Serbian folklore collector Vuk Karadzic wrote in the early 1800s about his informants "Everyone denies his own complicity, even the real poet, and says he heard it from someone else". And already Goethe recognized the different perceptions and pointed out that the term Volkslieder was something many used without really understanding what it meant.
Some believed that folk music was a submerged cultural artifact of art music and had been corrupted during the seepage. Others believed that everything was created by the people in a mighty collective and spontaneous creative process, that "the people write poetry".
The Danish "folk" in the 1800s
NFS had a son, Svend Grundtvig, who in the 1840s founded the study of folklore based on national romantic ideas. He was particularly inspired by the Swedish poet Geijer, who claimed that folk songs are not from a single social class, but poetry for the common bond of souls, as "a whole people sang like a man". And when Svend Grundtvig spoke of folk poetry, he emphasized that it was something historically completed, not something historically future, something created. It was about nothing less than the primal voice of the people. Folklore research was a kind of spiritual archaeology, and when people talked about folk songs and folk tales, they meant the entire Danish people, but not in their own time. They were reminiscent of the spirit that had once
animated the entire Danish people. But in return, the researchers and collectors hoped that the material would once again become FOLKish and used by everyone. Therefore, Svend Grundtvig encouraged all Danes to collect memories in folklore, i.e. folk songs, legends, poetry and fairy tales.
Then came Denmark's greatest folklore collector, Evald Tang Kristensen, who traveled around Jutland from the 1860s for about 40 years, listening and writing down the old people's songs, tales and stories. He was not a researcher, but a school teacher, and you have to take your hat off to his extensive ears and the fact that he was all over the place - on foot! He collected 3000 folk songs, 1000 melodies, 2700 fairy tales, 25000 legends and 25000 rhymes and proverbs and considered folklore to be a special poetry, a "life poetry" that Tang Kristensen wanted to preserve and spread to all people.
The folklore researcher Axel Olrik arrived in the 1880s and continued Grundtvig's scientific work, including Denmark's old folk songs, but his interest was more in sagas and heroic poetry. He became more and more interested in the contemporary tradition of the time and led the research up to contemporary traditions, for example. Saint Hans. He co-founded the Danish Folklore Collection in 1904 and the idea was that the "popular" was not only the old and dusty, but also the contemporary.
Denmark's first ethnomusicologist Hjalmar Thuren (1873-1912), like Olrik, believed that research into older folk music had to be based on a knowledge of the contemporary tradition. This basic attitude was continued by organist and archivist Hakon Grüner Nielsen, who recorded on the phonograph, the new smart technical marvel that could capture music and stories on wax rolls, and it became clear that "folk" was not only historical. His understanding of the material as an ever-changing entity was expressed as follows: "It must never be forgotten that every melody variant in itself necessarily has a certain meaning, and that the transformations of a melody can greatly give rise to the creation of new art values." Grüner Nielsen was an active collector and
author of "Vore ældste folkedanse" from 1917, and he served as archivist at Folkemindesamlingen until 1953.
"Folk -" in the 20th century
In addition to the various research initiatives in the field, folk music organizations have also played a major role in the efforts to describe what folk music is. The first association on Danish soil was established in 1901 by Andreas Otterstrøm, among others. He had seen Filochorus, a Swedish male troupe in folk costumes, dance and make music at the Dagmar Theatre in 1900. Otterstrøm was hooked and before long a Danish troupe was touring around Denmark and an association "Foreningen til Folkedansens Fremme" (FFF) was born. FFF's main purpose was to preserve and spread the old dances, melodies and costumes, as folk dancing should be educational for the people and promote health and purity in popular life.
Of course, there was also music, but it was not until 1943-44 that the musical part of the folk dance movement was given its own assembly, namely the Danish Folkedanseres Spillemandskreds, which was established with Svend Jørgensen as the driving force. He collected a large number of fiddler books and wrote many articles for the magazines Hjemstavnsliv and Folkedansen i Danmark in the 30s and 40s.
Jørgensen attempted to define folk music in the 1940s as "the music that originates from the people themselves and finds expression in song or on instruments made by or originating in the people". And the dance music part of this music he calls fiddlers' music, which he limits to the period 1750-1850. He wanted to take the fiddler tradition back to the Middle Ages and considered dance and music as "sunken cultural goods". Therefore, he was not interested in contemporary music and he shunned new-fangled instruments, such as the accordion, at the time derogatorily referred to as the "sailor's piano". The fiddlers' circle was for musicians who could play from sheet music, as Jørgensen considered it very important that the fiddlers knew the entire Danish repertoire, and not just music from a certain region, as he punctured the myth that the melodies were region-specific. He proved that many melodies were known throughout the country and also put some melodies into a European context and was in this respect quite internationally minded. At the same time, Svend Jørgensen wanted to give fiddlers classical ideals and had little use for "the bad, shabby musicians whose music almost consisted of screeching and laughing notes accompanied by heavy wooden shoe stomps."
In the middle of the 20th century, there was not much debate about folk music, and the contributions that there were came from the fiddlers, who at the same time defined music very tightly ("notes only"! "No tramp"!) and very broadly (music comes from everywhere). Jørgensen did not pride himself on being scientific, but since there was no one to contradict his interpretations, one can perhaps even talk about him forming a new ideology for the fiddler and folk dancer movement.
This went on until a conservatory-trained composer appeared. Thorkild Knudsen was loosely affiliated with the Danish Folk Memory Collection in the 1950s, and from 1958 he initiated collections and recorded music and song throughout the country. In 1971, he established a department of the Danish Folklore Memorial Collection in Hogager near Holstebro in the form of a "scientific station". Knudsen continued research into the origin and tonality of melodies, albeit in a completely new direction, as he emphasized the constant change of melodies, conditioned by singer, usage situation and environment. He was inspired by the Soviet music theorist Asafiev's intonation thesis that "musical expressions are never at rest, but are part of an incessant process of constant change, determined by the material environment and social-historical development". He introduced already known concepts such as intonation and phrasing, but gave them a new meaning: "Intonations can be phrased differently from time to time and are therefore changeable". Knudsen's theories were criticized for a lack of scientific concreteness, but the practical work in folk music houses around the world has been greatly influenced by his ideas about folk music and the nature of ballad melodies. The folk music houses came together under the auspices of FolkeMusikHusRingen in 1976.
At the same time, Thorkild Knudsen also distinguished the social and talked about different "scenes" such as the "folk scene" and the "commercial media scene" and narrowed folk music by claiming that "people are the poor". Knudsen was most interested in the traditional "Gammelballade" (medieval ballad) and searched for it on "the pure folk scene, where there is a mutual dependency between the ballad and a situation in folk life". He believed that there is a timeless and universal connection between traditional folk music and contemporary rhythmic music and that rhythmic folk music was too closely dependent on the commercial media scene in particular.
But something musical also happened in the wake of the great upheavals in society around the world. The folk revival in the USA with its direct and indirect political and social commentary inspired Danish musicians based in blues and jazz, and "the new folk music" emerged with folk singers like Caesar, Trille and Povl Dissing in the
mid-1960s. These artists performed on stage, recorded and released records and were a natural part of the development. They played music that addressed the audience directly and insisted on being relevant, at eye level and sometimes also politically topical. In Politiken's Folk Music Encyclopedia from 1989 with the subtitle "Den ny folkemusiks navne gennem 30 år" it is emphasized that the editors are aware of the widely different meanings of folk music that exist, but out of a subjective desire to help remove "the last unreasonable and inappropriate divisions between the old and the new folk music", they still use the word "folk music" rather than the more inclusive "folk". Although the editors recognize that there is a "new" and an "old" folk music, they also seem to believe that there should only be one.
When Thorkild Knudsen in the 1970s had introduced the young people in the folk music houses to the seasoned fiddler Evald Thomsen and the folk singer Ingeborg Munch22 ,who both had a lasting impact on many of the young people, the path was chalked up with both "new" folk music, "old" folk music, "folk", commercial music, fiddler music, and amateur inclusive music in the same world, at the same time. Everything could be labeled folk music. And thus, in my eyes, the confusion and mess was wonderfully complete, because
at the same time, the scope of the word folk music was almost limitless!
In 1981, the desire arose for an organization that could look after the interests of "the new folk musicians". These were musicians who made their living from stage music and who felt that the existing associations were not inclusive enough for the foreign and different thinking about folk music that had come in with the revival. The name of the association was FolkeMusikSammenslutningen.
The three large associations: Spillemandskredsen, FolkeMusikSammenslutningen and FolkeMusikHusRingen each saw themselves as the primary guardian of folk music's interests without much cooperation. Each association applied separately to the Danish Music Council for financial support for their members and their music, and therefore the Danish Music Council called the three associations to a conference in 1991. The result of the conference was that the associations jointly applied for funds from the Danish State Music Council to
establish the Folk Music Joint Secretariat (1994 - 2010), where the board consisted of representatives from all three associations, and all decisions were to be made in consensus. But the expectations for the secretariat were still different; some saw it as a secretariat in the true sense of the word, while others wanted a music-political organization, but the fact was that FFS was bound by the funds from the music council to work with professional music by publishing a folk music magazine, participation in music fairs and transport support for touring folk musicians.
In addition to the desire for a secretariat, the three associations also agreed to work towards a folk music programme. The folk music program at the Funen Music Conservatory became a reality in 1998.
Based on the history in Denmark, it is therefore impossible to try to find one understanding of the word folk music, as the layers of history stretch in many different directions. In my opinion, it can be roughly divided as follows:
- The oldest, Folkemindeforskningens, understanding of "folk -" as the "ancient/medieval" - was used by researchers and collectors. Today, researchers and academics are acutely aware of the narrow definition's
limitations, which is why it is no longer used.
- The old and narrowly defined "folk music from 1750-1850 played on a special selection of instruments", which still sits in many people's spines as a truth, although today that definition has softened significantly.
- Then came Thorkild Knudsen's rather long-haired definition of "intonation" and "phrasing" and the meta-conception that "everything is folk music", but that in return it is only possible to define which "scene" the music exists on, the folk scene, the commercial scene or the art music scene.
- The "new folk music", the folk, is based on the American folk revival. It also calls itself folk music, as the American historical contexts are put together like our domestic ones with folklorists, archives and collection work as a starting point.
Various attempts to define
International Folk Music Council, IFMC was formed under the auspices of UNESCO in 1947 as a peace project in the wake of World War II. IFMC is the largest international interest organization for folk music, and they were one of the first to write a definition of folk music. It reads:
"Folk music is the product of a musical tradition based on oral tradition. The factors that create the tradition are:
- Continuity, which links present and past
- Variation, which arises from creative impulses from the individual or society.
- A society's selection, which determines in which forms the music survives. It is a society's reshaping and recreation of music that makes it folk music."
However, the term 'folk music' eventually became a straitjacket due to its Eurocentric definition, where only European folk music was included26. In 1981 the name of the organization was changed from IFMC to ICTM (International Council for Traditional Music), so today it is an organization for the more ideologically neutral "traditional music" instead of "folk music".
The Great Danish Encyclopedia is based on the ICTM's definition. Here you can read Jens Henrik Koudal's presentation of the ICTM's definition, though pointing out some, in his opinion, significant debatable assumptions, as this definition assumes the existence of societies with stable living conditions, where oral
tradition can exist. According to Koudal, highly industrialized, urbanized societies do not fit into the definition.
According to the somewhat more specialized reference work, Gads Musikleksikon from 2003, folk music is limited to the music preserved in non-written tradition in "popular" social classes. The author (again Jens Henrik Koudal) distinguishes here that folk music is in constant transformation as long as it is alive, and "only when the
living folk music tradition has died out is the music fixed".
In today's Danish 2015 reality, in an article about Tønder Festival in Weekendavisen, journalist Rene Gummer uses the following definition: "Folk music is a musical expression that has been used for centuries in a defined national area and which cannot be merged with other genres". Gummer also states that he has little use for the definition, as it makes no sense to "talk about regional music in a globalized world.
I looked for the wording of the definition and found the following on Wikipedia, which I therefore immediately assume is Gummer's source: "(...) The peculiarity of the traditional definition of folk music is that it is regional and thus linked to a specific people, in a specific delimited national area. It can rarely be merged with other genres - in which case some would argue that it loses the right to the genre designation folk music(...)"
It is clear to me that a festival like Tønder Festival does not share this definition of folk music as "nationally defined" and "non-fusion-bar". But I find it interesting that WHEN something occasionally pops up in the media today about folk music, you don't immediately see the word folk music as encompassing almost everything at once. But the journalist still tries to refer to a narrow definition from an encyclopedia. Which is strange, because in the general population there are so many people who relate to folk music in different ways.
Conclusion
All these different perceptions of folk music through time and the different definitions have given us a pretty broad picture that folk music is both given by some very specific frameworks and at the same time given by the fact that there is no framework at all. It's both very opaque and at the same time open and nuanced. In short, the definition of folk music has gone from being a social categorization to a style with certain characteristics. The strange thing is that the word "folk music" is still widely used, while there is not always an awareness that
the meaning is so far removed from when the word was created. But the word just sits well in the mouth and has become something most people want to relate to as something human, something nice, something cozy (how quintessentially Danish is that!), something folky. The words traditional music, roots music, folk, western instrumental music, folk dance music and fiddle music are not at all the same, they are almost exclusive in their sound, whereas "FOLK" music is almost as good as "HUMAN" music.
I quote here Owe Ronström's concluding reflection from his 1990 article entitled "Nationell musik? Bondemusik?" (my translation):
"It is difficult to delimit folk music from other kinds of music. It is even more difficult to delineate the folk music of a certain region from the music of other regions. The question of what folk music "really is" or what is "typical
Gotlandic folk music" is impossible to answer. But it is clear that the concept carries such a great cultural charge that many have dared to try. Ultimately, folk music is nothing more than what we call folk music. It is the people who use the word who decide what it should mean. Musician, researcher, politician, audience, all are involved in an eternal tug-of-war about which direction and how far the content can be stretched. In the middle are the most ardent folk music combatants, each fighting in their own direction. Those who preach orthodoxy, authenticity, morality and faithfulness to tradition face those who preach heretical innovation, development and progress. What is to be believed about the outcome of this battle? (...) "
I think this quote fits the Danish reality as well, as it captures the impossibility of giving a definitive answer and refers to the eternal discussion that exists. My immediate response to the open question at the end is however: that this struggle and debate is still necessary!
Finally, looking at my mapping of folk music through the lens of folk music, I can see a correlation between the many perceptions of folk music and the musical diversity of students and educators. I hope that new generations of folk musicians see themselves as a part of history and recognize the many opportunities that come with being a folk musician, but above all recognize the need to reflect on where they stand in the landscape.
In my own eyes, music is a communication between people. Music is a language. Folk music is a relationship between people, the language that makes the most sense when it is FROM someone or AFTER someone or TO someone. And a language is a personal thing that no one but oneself can define. So I don't think you can
define what folk music is in a broad sense. You just have to decide for yourself what folk music is for you.
And why do I work with folk music? Because it's wonderful to play. Because it's wonderful to communicate musically without sheet music. Because it's wonderful to watch people dance and be present in their dance. And because it's important to me that this kind of music continues to exist, which lies between classical and
rhythmic music, between sonic emotionality and rhythmic grooviness, between epic ballads and contemporary lyrics, between past and future. - Just where the awareness of the old fiddlers, ballad singers and folk singers brings the personal contemporary individual into play and demands an answer to the question "what is folk music for YOU?"
Bibliography:
Printed sources:
Piø, Iørn 1966: Folkeminder og traditionsforskning. Danish Historical Society
Handbooks, Copenhagen.
Ronström, Ove 1990: "National music? Peasant music? Om folkmusikbegreppet".
In:Maria Herlin Karnell & Kerstin Kyhlberg (ed.) "Gimaint u bänskt. The history of folk music
on Gotland." Gotlands Fornsal. Ss 9-20.
Kofod, Else Marie and Koudal, Jens Henrik 1993: "Forord" 12 x Tang. Articles about the
multifaceted Evald Tang Kristensen (Foreningen Danmarks Folkeminder 1993).
Copenhagen, pp. 7-8.
Bohlmann, Philip 1988 The study of Folk Music in the Modern World. Indiana
University Press, USA.
Koudal, Jens Henrik 2004: Folkeminder og dagliglivets kultur. C.A.Reitzels Forlag.
Knudsen, Anelise and Thorkild 1995: Seks indgange til balladen, vol. 1-2,
(Folkemusikhus 13-14). Hogager, vol. 1, p. 100.
Klitgaard, Alan (ed.) 1989: Politikens Folkemusikleksikon, Den ny folkemusiks navne
gennem 30 år. Politikens Forlag.
Koudal, Jens Henrik 1994-2001: Den store danske Encyklopædi. Gyldendal
Koudal, Jens Henrik 2003: GADs Musikleksikon. Gads Forlag, Copenhagen.
Gummer, Rene 2015 "Folkets Tønder", printed in Weekendavisen 04.09.15
Unprinted sources:
Bech, Benjamin Bøgelund 2009 musikhistorieopgave: "Hvad er folkemusik" (Det
Fynske Musikkonservatorium). Unpublished
Christensen, Anders, thesis 1992 "Vi bruger hele kroppen" (Københavns
Universitet). Unprinted
Bæk, John, thesis 1999: "Dansk Spillemandsmusik 1660-1999"
(Department of Musicology, Aarhus University). Unprinted
Folk-Eh-Music
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