Differences between trad and folk - are there any?

It occured to me that a lot of people are ignorant of the differences between Traditional music and Folk music.
In my own opinion, both are great creative outlets, but there is a big difference between the genres.
Unfortunately, it seems that unless you do one or the other as a pastime/lifesyle, most casual punters couldnt tell the difference if someone showed them.
Am I wrong and making a sweeping generalisation?
Is any one else p*ssed off with people asking them why they dont do the lonesome boat man, not to mention the fields of athenry etc etc etc etc……………🙁

yea, everytime i go to a session with my pipes i’m always, ALWAYS asked to play the lonesome boatman, and i don’t for two resons, 1) it’s over rated, there are so many better slow airs out there; and 2) i don’t want to waste good piping time with tunes everyone has heard a thousand and one times.

i know this sounds stupid blas, but…could you tell me what the difference between trad. and folk are?

cheers

Okay, let’s have a five hundred word essay clearly delineating the differences. 🙂

We sort of know what we’re talking about when we talk to each other, but the distinctions tend to slide away like jelly when we try to nail them to the wall.

For some reason, Finbar Furey’s version of Lonesome Boatman makes me visualise Clint Eastwood. 😛

How do you define trad and folk? Isn’t trad music just folk music that was written by people who are dead now?

“Dirty Harry” or “Play Misty for Me”? I think trad is “Dirty Harry” and folk is “Misty”… The first has that necessary dirt and scraping about it that Cape Breton and Maritime musicians say needs to be in the music, while the latter is a potentially psychotic fairy tale, a kind of Disneyfied view of life.

“Dirty Harry” is come as you will, sweat under the armpits, and the ‘trad’ of it just happens to be something worked into you life, like the dirt you pick up under finger nails, the stains and callouses. It isn’t everything, but it has it’s importance, and somehow it is earned rather than assumed or affected. The trad musician steps out into the weather, whatever it is, with a “Go ahead, make my day!” attitude. And in the session ~ “I know what you’re thinking. Did he play six tunes or only five? Well, to tell you the fkn‘ truth, in all this excitement, I’ve kinda lost track myself. But being as this is a ________, potentially the most powerful musical instrument in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: ’Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya punk?”

“Misty” is all a front, like wearing a costume, gingham dresses and stetson’s to be ‘country’ ~ it’s perpetrators referred to by some as “folkies” and “weekend folkies”… These ‘fairy folk’, those smiling weekend folkies, just trip lightly around, vegetarians, don’t swear, do contra dancing, play the Appalachian dulcimer now and then and greet everything with a smile and a “Have a nice day!” I’d like to say ‘mostly harmless’, but it’s a bit like ‘intentions’…not always a healthy thing for ‘trad’… And sometimes they go manic and start organizations and pass by-laws… 😏

Sounds like an interesting definition! yeah, folk music is more like hippie stuff while trad is more down to the roots, fast fiddle tunes and ballads about people who die or something similar.
I’m not good at definitions though and I always make people mad when I try so I guess I’d better shut up.

“Folk” is definitely “misty”…

In Scotland, people sometimes use the word “folk” for “traditional,” just like “loch” for “lake.”

Actually, what I had in mind was the “Man with No Name” from all those Sergio Leone movies. 😉

Same in Northumberland.

…in reply to what Slainte said.

I would have always considered traditional irish music as being a sub set of irish folk music - as in irish folk music being a more general term encompassing ballads, mary black type songs & trad …

i think trad music is music that is traditional to any country or region or group like that and folk music is music that can be played or sang by anyone. has no limitations like money, background…. it sounds more defined in my head but can’t write it down!!

The jelly’s sliding away! I’ll go get some more nails.

LOL, Bob! 😀

Variations on this topic come up here and everywhere and usually generate some interesting conversation, but I think we do better at describing the people who play, sing or enjoy the music than at defining the music itself.

The muzik industry has pretty well obscured the traditional definition (Ha!) of “folk” by pinning the label on everybody who sings and plays a (non-electric) guitar. Because of this, I mainly use “traditional” when talking about any kind of trad/ethnic/folk music, but sometimes I use “folk” just because it seems to be the best starting point to connect with someone.

As for definitions, I tend to use “traditional” and “folk” interchangeably, depending on the audience. It’s frustrating trying to answer the question, “What kind of music do you play?” because the questioner really wants a simple answer in three words or less.

“Folk” is generally understood by the masses, while “trad” can cause confusion with some, you find yourself stuck with having to come up with some kind of definition that usually includes the word “folk”. Yes, interchangeable, except, as Bob himself says, the damn thing is ‘everything and the kitchen sink’, and the stuff that collects ion the elbow trap too… I quite like the word, single syllable, like so many fine swear words, and the f to start it off and the k to finish it. I prefer folking about to the other close relative. I suppose it is more hospital jelly to me Bob, which can be nailed to the wall, and works as a plaster in an emergency, you know, sugar is an antisceptic…and if anything is sugar rich, in a lot of its abuse, ‘folk’ definitely is. That said, I prefer it in it’s softer forms, something you can throw at anything and it will stick without having to be nailed…

😏

Hey Dow, is Northumberland really like a Sergio Leone film? I can hear the harmonica now…who’s next?

It’s all in a word.
Childe collated the english and scottish Popular ballads;
Sharpe collected english Folk songs;
now we play Traditional music.
I blame the folk-song clubs, where they let any number of wooly-minded winsome lads and lasses strum their guitars to self-penned ballads of indulgence. This lets people think anything with an acoustic guitar accompaniment is folk music. One just has to bemoan, as an old fogie, and folkie, how the use of words can change their meaning.
All these Clint Eastwood movie similies only reflect peoples’ PERCEPTIONS of what these words mean. When asked what my band does I say all the words in a rush, and let people ( folk ! ) pick out which they understand - "barn-dance, square dance, folk dance, ceilidh, folk music, traditional music, diddley-diddley music, jigs and reels and hornpipes……
Then there’s the professional folk-singer or musician, surely an oxymoron as the original folk-musicians were just part of their community and carried the music for it ?

In places that have their own untouched musical traditions, music is just ‘music’. This was the case in many parts of Ireland until probably well into the 20th Century. In the wake of the folk revival of the 50s and 60s (which was a revival of ‘traditional music’), the term ‘folk’ became synonymous with a certain commercial musical genre. So the term traditional was presumably favoured by musicians in Ireland to distance themselves from a kind of music with which they felt little affinty.

“I would have always considered traditional irish music as being a sub set of irish folk music - as in irish folk music being a more general term encompassing ballads, mary black type songs & trad … ”

Or is Irish folk music an offshoot of Irish traditional music?

Some folk is trad. All trad is folk.

jesus wept

make my day

I am clear that traditional music is folk music is traditional music. I am quite willing to try to clarify the description to anyone, whether I have to call it Celtic, Old Country, Ethnic, or anything else which might trigger recognition. It doesn’t change what it is.
“the original folk musicians were just part of their community” sorry, GP, but O’Carolan and Scott Skinner were in it for the money. It doesn’t change the quality of their music.

My stereotypes:

One school of folkie wears Arran sweaters, sticks fingers in ears and sing nasally, songs (old and new) about things they’ve never done and will never do. They expect to be taken seriously. Others write and perform their own songs in the same vein and accompany them on huge guitars, in the style of Father Ted’s “My Little Horse”.

Traditional players don’t dress up, aren’t insecure, keep their mouths shut (unless to drool) and stick to playing dance tunes and airs.

Does anybody really care? Not really

It’s all down to history and perceptions, isn’t it ?
The Clancy brothers, the originators of the Arran sweater school of performing, were unsuccessful actors who turned to folk-singing as a fund-raiser, and brought in Tommy Makem, whose mother was a respected singer, as a supplement.
I have enjoyed many of the guitar-playing singer/songwriters, but I do understand it’s not folk-music.
How many years can a man sing a song, before you can call him a “trad” ?
Where does Martin Carthy sit in this plethora of definitions ?
( PS Do we care ? Only as far as letting other people understand what we do. )

“My Lovely Horse” - we actually played that at our local session a little while ago - but is it Folk or Trad? Not sure

Singer-Songwriters ~ YEE HA!!!

Damn Bob, have you ever seen jelly evaporate? I had it here, nailed to the desk, and it got smaller and smaller, and shriveled, and then ~ just went up in a misty puff of smoke. I did hear what sounded kind of like Kumbayah, like a last gasp as it disappeared in a mist…

Anyway, gotta get my moth eaten (Irish moths) Galway tweed on, flat cap and coat for a do tonight. Now, is this one where I should take a pipe or not? Do I go all serious or will I be able to slag without anyone making disapproving faces at me?

Oh damn, I just remembered, it’s an SCA thing. They said it was something Medieval and that I could wear a cape. Maybe I can find my old batman costume from when I was a kid. I wonder if that would fit? Anybody got a Greek Lauto I can borrow. I wonder if a beret would be appropriate? Hell, I’ve got it, I’ll take my bones to rattle up a storm and make one of those carts with a false space to put my legs in, and I can get out some jam and other bits and make seeping sores and black out some teeth and just drag myself around the place, moaning for singing. I wonder if they’d let sea chanties pass. Of course, with my teeth blacked out all I need to do to finish the role is mumble or whistle and hold out my hand now and then croaking for a coin?

A certain famous Irish piper used to open up with the theme from Star Wars… I doubt he feels any embarrassment there, any more than a certain Donegal fiddler who also played sax in a dance band…

Here’s a quote I found from West coast of Scotland songwriter Ewan MacVicar, made on a “Mudcat café” discussion 6 years ago:

“In Scotland nowadays the terms folk and folksinger are totally devalued. They denote a pub with a Corries imitating guitar thrasher in the corner yelling songs into a mike with no regard to the meaning of the words, let alone any subtlety. Folk is music to talk over and get drunk to. We talk about traditional music and song just now - the terms are often misapplied, and will in time become devalued too, but not yet.”

Personally, when anyone asks me, I tell them I play traditional music.

Is anyone really THAT bothered what is trad, what is folk and what is folking trad is??

Folk off! ~ 🙂 And while your at it, have a folking nice day too…

Jelly fight anyone, my hospital jelly up against your store bought stuff…

It’s all in how you use it… In Amerikay they put marshmallows and others stuff in it and call it ambrosia ~ the food of the Gods… The following examples from Cooks.com ~

AMBROSIA SALAD

1 (7 oz.) can crushed pineapple
1 can mandarin oranges
1 c. sour cream
1/2 c. flaked coconut
1 pkg. orange Jello
1 1/2 c. hot water or liquid off oranges and pineapple
1 c. sm. marshmallows

Dissolve Jello in hot water, chill until partially set. Add sour cream and whip until fluffy. Fold in other ingredients and chill until firm.

AMBROSIA BAVARIAN (JELLO SALAD)

1 (3 oz.) pkg. orange Jello
2 tbsp. sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1 c. boiling water
1 c. orange juice
1 (8 oz.) can crushed pineapple, drained
1 (8 oz.) container Cool Whip, thawed
1/2 c. flaked coconut

Dissolve Jello, sugar and salt in boiling water. In a medium bowl, stir in orange juice and syrup from pineapple, chill until thick as unbeaten egg white. Beat until fluffy light with beater.
Stir in whipped topping until well blended, fold in pineapple and coconut. Pour into large bowl and chill.

Folks have their own takes on it, even family recipes handed down from the back of jelly packages ~ some like grapes cut in half, some like other fruit, some use nuts, some use sour cream and leave the jelly (jello) out altogether… Some use a mold…

Isn’t trad some old geezer in a straw boater wheezing his way through Sweet Georgia Brown on a clarinet?

I remember, back in the ‘60s’, when you could get a 3-piece suit, have a night out on the town, and get yourself a good paper-ful of fish‘n’chips on the way home all for half-a-crown, that a vicar remarked how he had heard there was a film out, very popular with the younger people, called “It Is Traditional, Father,” and he thought how true it was that the young people could teach their parents a thing or two about tradition……

“It’s Trad, Dad”

Now that we’ve finally nailed down trad and folk, how are they different from ethnic music?

Is Rock & Roll traditional yet?

Herself and I once happened upon a gathering of the SCA, decades ago. Kaniguts and fair damsels and swordplay, etc. Couldn’t recall any recent ingestion of hallucinogenic substance, so concluded it must be an instance of creative anachronism. Was this the seed for the later blooming of renaissance festivals? Or were you refering to the Society for Creative Anarchy, ceol?

Hey Bob, the jelly has grown legs and is climbing the wall in a polyrhythmic fashion ~ in other words, lots of legs… Is it the jelly or has some society of insects come to fetch it for themselves. Will they worship it or consume it, or both? Damn hospital jelly is funny stuff ain’t it? Come back her you bastard. Gotta go get a broom and see if I can swat it and nail it down again… ( Anarchists, yeah, you can’t arrange a p*ss-up in a brewery with that lot… ) 😉

But also, what does stuff like Pressed For Time, Celtic Thunder and their ilk classify as…….they aren’t traditional to the composers’ regions, so do they classify as traditional? But then I thought folk was something to do with being the music of the people, and these tunes wouldn’t classify as that. But then, in a session I went to, these tunes were played frequently, so they became traditional in the sense that it was traditional in that session to play them….?!? If you want to make it even more complicated, stuff like Scott-Skinner’s The Mathematician isn’t frequently played in sessions, wouldn’t be used for dancing, isn’t the music of the people….so what is it??

And, what about singers such as Kate Rusby?? Mainly sings her own or other people’s songs, so probably is folk as opposed to trad, but yet hardly is in the same catergory as Joze Gonzalez (sp?) who was in the UK charts a while ago as a “folk”-pop singer.

I’ve no intention of suggesting answers to any of this, there aren’t any. But I was amazed to hear Seth Lakeman (Mercury prize nominee) on Radio 1 the other day….and heartened by the reactions the DJ got to it. Which explains it for me - folk, traditonal and world music are labels applied by the commercial element of music, possibly to compartmentalise it away from the mainstream. And even though trad/folk/whatever is something most people are never exposed to, many people like it when they hear it for the first time.

World Music was a marketing term that, I believe, the editor of Folk Roots and a couple of other people suggested to the big record-sellers was a useful extra category to have in their stores - it opened the market for an awful lot of overseas ethnic and popular music that otherwise would simply not have had a place to be offered in record shops.
PS I thought Kate Rusby sings trad songs, it’s just that her style is so bland you can’t recognise them as such. At least, that’s how it seemed to me at Towersey Fest a couple of years ago. Sack her. let’s just listen to her band, I say !

Kate Rusby band minus Kate Rusby = John McCusker band……..possibly swapping Ewan Vernal for Kris Drever on bass.

Thanks for the interesting discussion on the uses and control of jelly.

My experience of folk/trad has been Wales and England and the association of folk in these countries has always seemed to me to be the folk clubs, which are aligned to sitting still, shutting up and listening whatever the talent or not of the performer/singer. I don’t enjoy this kind of atmosphere and it’s not surprising folk is thought of as “finger in the ear” (in a mocking way). It’s all very well everyone being able to perform at whatever level, after all who is to be judge on who can or can’t play in public (?), but this poor level of musicianship/singing is often what people think of as “folk”. Some of the best singing I’ve heard has been in Sheffield but not in the organised setting of folk clubs, more in pubs in an informal setting. The quality is high so people listen. The Sheffield Carols are an example of this running for about a month around christmas where people gather year after year in pubs to sing carols with changed tunes and/or words from the ones you might find in school/church. http://www.yorkshire-folk-arts.com/info/traditions/carols.html . As it says on that site, people gather for the love of singing, maybe that’s the difference between that and people that sing in folk clubs to show off they have learnt a Bob Dylan tune and can play a couple of chords on a guitar.

I’m not sure where I’m going now…. now off to look how to do smilies….

And here I thought folk music was just traditional musics with words!
musicofireland

Friggin Frezz, so where the hell did you go with those similies? Are they a close relative of smiles? Alls I can say is stop folkin’ around and get your finger out of your ____ and make it happen, make a community…or find yourself a place in one that is pre-exisiting…

Yes, the tears of the soul… But I’m convinced his real problem, the space following, was his take on deep breathing, he having a fetish for jelly… You know how those things uncork the evil demon within…

So, another barbie ~ horse steaks, a Lancashire hot pot, and one of those fancy jelly molds with little marshmellows… Is it you what?!!? that’s bringing the latter? I’ll bring the Moskovskaja & slivovitz… Anyone have some nice aged Cuban rum lyin’ round the place they can chip in?

My formative experiences of folk clubs was in the ’70’s. They were places where you could get a floor spot to try and sing or play a tune in a relatively unthreatening environment (i.e., nobody was likely to get up and roar, “AAAAARGH STOP THAT sh*tE!!!” as you tootled your way through the Harvest Home Hornpipe). The punters, who weren’t usually charged all that much anyway, thus had their appetites sharpened for the evening’s guest performer(s), who could only gain by comparison - they couldn’t possibly be worse, and of course many were marvellous. So everyone was happy.
The difference between the folk club scene and the traditional music session scene seemed to me at the tender age of 19 to be this: to start to participate in folk clubs was open even to people of such an advanced age as myself, but to be part of an ITM session you probably had to have been conceived in it.

Hey, this could be a new thing ~ conception in a bath of Guinness… I suppose we need to all start getting basic first aid training, something I believe in anyway, along with basic delivery skills… Now I know why my poor mammy never wanted to talk about my conception, ashamed that it was on the floor of some pub. We need to bring this out in the open and wash that shame away… 😉

My experiences in English folk clubs are not so rosey coloured, more gased by the smoke and BO…and bowled over by all the costumes and affectations, finger-in-the-ear and all, don’t yuh knowse…

ceolachan, sorry if that last quip of mine was offensive. I’d put it another way - when I was a student, first seeing people playing ITM in sessions, they all seemed to have been playing reels and jigs fast, perfectly, and for a very long time. Sessions seemed a lot more intimidating than folk clubs: musically because one evidently had to have a decent command of an acceptable instrument played at session speed in a traditional style, and something of a repertoire; and socially because one had to push into or be accepted by an in-crowd. (I didn’t find any ITM (book) tutors in the early ’70’s, though they probably existed; hence, it was difficult to find out just how it was played.
I aspired to play ITM, but while I was working out how to, I took shelter in folk clubs.

Hey Nickie ~ no way! I like you! ~ But I’m easy… I’m glad though that you came back with some clarity. I like what you’ve written and agree.

The ‘session’ is hardly older, maybe even younger, than the tradition of the folk club. I get a bit fed up with folks automatically assuming that by ‘trad’ one means the ‘session’… The ‘trad’ I am most fond of is not the ‘session’ scene, but the earlier forms of sharing the music and the dance, which were more open and welcoming in general, not a tight collection of musicians in the corner of some pub, but a wide variety of different folks, including dancers and singers and story tellers and various odds and ends from the local community. I’m glad to say that some sessions do actually fit that ilk ~ God bless them and nurture them too. But I have seen the tight balls of folk in a smoky corner of a pub and no obvious place free to sit and join in ~ or so it seemed from the outside. So, I do understand how that can seem ~ as if it were a clique, folks ‘in the know’, members of a private club of sorts…

I have seen something similar to your ‘folk club’ on the outer isles around Eire, where it was close to as you mention it, someone might do a Loretta Lynn impression, like a certain friend’s daughter, and the folks present would give ear and appreciation, and then we’d be back with some music, and then someone might do a bit of stepping, and music, and some dance, and maybe a story or recitation or even a long drawn out funny tale ~ and then chat and music woven throughout it all, not judgements, even the little kid who can’t quite play that instrument or tune would be welcome and praised… Personally, I like that, and the Loretta Lynn imitation was damned good… 😉

~ I should have widened that to not just the ‘outer isles’, but all over Eire and beyond…

It’s unbelievable that people are so out of touch with contradictions that they still pitch one against the other as if one is more ‘authentic’? It’s crazy. It’s rude. It’s stuck up & it’s backward

“Still”? - the last post on this thread before yours was 7 years ago! 🙂 But thanks anyway for unearthing this thread. I must have missed it the first time round. It looks quite interesting. I’ll read it when I get back from my “trad” session…which is just about to start!

All of this and ceolachan’s recipe for Ambrosia!