Capturing and Preserving Tradition

Back to the initial literature review. This is Part 3, following my August 27 blog.

Music as folklore
As Pegg has indicated, much of the research effort into British folk music, from the late 19th century to the present day, has been directed to the collection of songs, tunes and dances for the purposes of preservation, education and social history. Child’s extensive work on the ballad traditions of England and Scotland (2005) provided an impetus for the 20th century folk revivals (see Cheesman & Rieuwarts 1997), although earlier collections of popular songs, for example by Thomas Percy (1729-1811) and Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), were already in the public domain.

Sharp’s comprehensive study (1907) stimulated renewed interest in English folklore although his seemingly heroic rescue of almost-forgotten songs from obscurity was not without its critics. Boyes (1993) comments an inherently conservative view of folklore epitomised by Sharp and reinforced by the establishment of the English Folk Dance and Song Society in 1932 through the merger of the Folk-Song Society and the English Folk Dance Society, formed by Sharp in 1911 (Schofield undated, online). Sutton records accusations by Sharp’s contemporary, Mary Neal of inaccurate collecting, pedantry and obstruction of mass participation in the folk movement (Sutton 2000 online).

Nevertheless, Sharp’s work revealed the existence of a wide range of sources of ‘folk’ material. His contemporary, Percy Grainger introduced a revolutionary means of collecting songs in the first decade of the 20th century, by recording performances of folk singers on a phonograph (Yates 1982). Collections, which helped fuel the post-war folk revival, included Vaughan Williams and Lloyd (1959), (1960), Lloyd (1967), Raven, J. (1971 and 1977),* Raven, M. (1974) and the prolific collections of Roy Palmer (1974, 1986, 1998)**.

Historiographies of folklore are critiqued by Harker (1980 and 1985) who, along with Boyes (1993), represents a ‘revisionist’ approach to the study of revivalism in folk music (Atkinson 2006: 6-8). Harker observes that the preservation of folk songs was effectively a form of ‘mediation’ reflecting ‘assumptions, attitudes, likes and dislikes’ (Harker 1985:xiii). He argues:

…unless we are prepared to learn to cope with cultural products, like songs, which derive from workers’ culture, then history will continue to be written from the ‘top’ down...
(Harker 1985:255)

Returning to Brocken, concerns on the mediating role on folk ‘tradition’ by bourgeois collectors and archivists have resonance in today’s folk club performances, which:

…can (and do) reek of … musical virtuosity and elitism. Sessions and singarounds do not belong to the common musical parlance of young people of the twenty-first century and do not relate to their social mores or everyday social interactions.
(Brocken 2003:130)

He levels a similar criticism at Britain’s biggest-selling folk magazine, F-Roots, which, he argues: ‘continues to present folk music as an anodyne substance soaked in the values and mores of its largely middle-class clientele’ (op cit: 140).

* Raven, J., 1971, Kate of Coalbrookdale: Songs from Broadsheets of the 18th and 19th Century, London: Robbins Music; Raven, J., 1977, The Urban and Industrial Songs of the Black Country and Birmingham, Wolverhampton: Broadside
** Palmer, R. (ed.), 1974, A Touch on the Times: Songs of Social Change 1770-1914, Harmondsworth: Penguin; Palmer, R. (ed.), 1986, Everyman’s Book of English Country Songs, London: Omnibus Press (reprint of 1979 edition by London: Dent); Palmer, R. (ed.), 1998, A Book of British Ballads, Felinfach: Llanerch (reprint of 1980 edition of Everyman’s Book of British Ballads by London: Dent)

Ethnography or ethogenics?

I've finally got my hands on a copy of John Smith's paper, The Ethogenics of Music Performance, in which he undertakes a social-psychologist's analysis of behaviours and roles in his local folk club, the Glebe Live Music Club in Sunderland.

The links between this and my own research are obvious and, glancing through the pages, I noted immediately some similarities in his approach. For example, he discusses the spatial arrangements of the club room and the impact this has as an environment on human interaction and role enactment - a theme I also addressed in my conference papers in Newcastle and Birmingham.

Another point that struck me was the similarity in organisation, routine and indeed repertoire encountered at a folk club in Sunderland in 1985 with those features today of many folk clubs that I have visited in the English Midlands. Although I did expect this to be the case.

What I didn't expect was the opportunity this paper provides to reflect on methodology and ethics.

Ethogenics is a term I hadn't seriously explored up until now, but according to some sources it does address some of the methodological problems of ethnography, not least because it takes into account the ability of researcher to share or empathise with the cultural knowledge and values of those being researched. In this case, the author was analysing the folk club that he himself ran and took part in. Rather than pretend to put on a social scientist's hat as he wrote up his results, he was able to apply the social psychologist's tools of analysis from a more informed basis. In many ways, this approach is similar to David Grazian's study of a Chicago Blues Club that I have discussed earlier.

At the same time this also raises an ethical consideration. Should the researcher let on to his fellow singers, musicians and auience members that he is studying their behaviour? If they know, would it change the way they behave, or the way they feel about the presence of the researcher? Because I attend folk clubs anyway, usually as a floorsinger, occasionally as a guest or a guest host, my presence at these events is accepted as normal. But I don't turn up armed with tape or video recorders, or laptop, or even a notebook and pen. Recording my observations relies on my sometimes precarious memory but I still feel more comfortable with that than drawing attention to my role as a researcher at the venue itself. It seems to me that this problem is inherent and inevitable for the ethogenist (if that's the right word!) more than it is for the ethnographer.

Hopefully I'll have more insight when I actually read John Smith's paper. Will report on that soon - and continue with the overall lit review, (now that my computer is back online).

John L.Smith    Glebe Live Music Club    ethogenics     ethnography     folk clubs     David Grazian     ethics