Talk:Traditional music

message: Hi all.  I think the pages for World music, Roots music, Folk music, and Traditional music need some changes.  I've documented the ideas at Wikipedia:WikiProject World music/Definitions; if you could all respond on the talk page, that would be great!
-- TimNelson 04:58, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Major changes to World, Folk, Roots, and Traditional music pages 

message: "Occasionally, collected traditional song versions include material or verses incorporated from different songs that makes little sense in its context.[citation needed]"
I'm stuggling to find an example of this phenomenon. Sarah Cleveland (b 1905) is a respected traditional Irish-USA singer.Biography. Her version of "Let No Man steal Your Thyme" contains a mixture of another song - "Seeds of Love". Sarah's version. The result is slighty odd, but not nonsense. If nobody can find a better example, this might fit the bill. Ogg 17:49, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Makes little sense 

message: I added a clean up tag because I found the writing, especially in the opening section, to be very poor.  There is too much use of bold. The itemized list is not standardized in capitalization or punctuation.  The first sentence has the weasel words of 'a lot'.  The language is too informal, i.e. "While this is not a bad thing. . .".  A Softer Answer (talk) 23:04, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Cleanup tag

message: The article suggests this as a only a side-effect. For what it may be worth, I would propose that a copyright would negate a song from ever being traditional. Only when it goes into the public domain and is able to change and become personalized to a certain region, people, situation, etc., can it be considered traditional. A citation supporting this view would be Norm Cohen who writes that unlike a popular or classical music, traditional folk songs change over time—"Variation or change, then, are hallmarks of traditional folk song"; p. xxiv, Cohen, Norm. "Folk Music: A Regional Exploration (Greenwood Guides to American Roots Music)". Greenwood Press, 2005. ISBN 0-313-32872-2   -- TestsPoint (talk) 02:50, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Lack of copyright on songs

message: A couple of citations from Norm Cohen's book (see above) may also be useful for this subject:
*p. xxii; "A more useful approach is to define folk music as the music that survives without complete dependence on commercial media."
*p. xxxviii. "Unlike a popular song or a work of elite music, though, a folk song did not die out when it was no longer commercial; ..."
-- TestsPoint (talk) 03:18, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Non-commercial

message: (a) The copyright issue
I disagree. Most baroque classical music is not copyright. Music copyright laws didn't become enforcable until the late nineteenth century. We must define traditional music by what it is, not by what it isn't. Copyright varies from country to country. In the UK the writer (and his estate) are entitled to copyright until 99 years after his death. Even to suggest that copyright is part of definition of folk music (as opposed to a side-affect) opens the door to the idea that punk and rap becoming eligible as folk music after the passage of 99 years. It suggests that the same song might be folk in one country and not in another, because of variation in laws.
(b) Variation
I disagree. The song "Fathom the Bowl" is always treated as traditional and yet the version now generally sung is identical to the earliest known printed version. Just because it failed to change, doesn't mean it can't be described as folk music. Beethoven wrote a cadenza to last section of the fifth piano concerto, but his earlier concertos have no cadenzas. i.e. in theory the pianist will decide what to play, by inventing his own variations. Does this make his first four concertos folk music? No. Is jazz folk? No.
(c) Non-commercial
I disagree. Let's face it, most classical music is non-commercial. Did anyone ever make a profit out of a work by Stockhausen? The printer, yes. The performers, not without a distored market. Massive subsidies by governments, arts councils and rich patrons enable such things to take place. Even the record/CD manufacturers struggle.
(d) Surviving without complete dependence on commercial media
I disagree. The classical music of India and China survived by being passed down from master to pupil, over hundreds of years. Is Indian classical music folk? no.
Instead I return to the real issues: local culture, rites-de-passages and seasonal events. Social binding and anthropology provide the keys to folk music, in much the same was as costume, dialect and choice of food are affected by those issues. A folk song celebrates victories, laments defeats, welcomes the arrival of spring, complains of social injustice and laughs at folly and pretentiousness. It binds together workers who share the same working conditions and youths who share the same pleasures of love, drink, gambling, dancing, hunting and sport. You are obsessed with formalism and you ignore the human heart. People may sing "Anarchy in the UK" in 100 years time, perhaps with new words, and without any profit motive, but it will never be folk music, because it does not bind a community together. Your formalist point of view has lots of academic support, but mine does not. You can provide lots of literary quotations, I cannot. Folk music documents the fate of a community and measures its pulse. Ogg (talk) 20:40, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: You seem to be suggesting that there is a difference between songs sung by "folks" and songs sung by scholars. Yes, that is a very popular opinion. The article "folk song" embraces that opinion, and that kind of popular song. However, this article isn't about that kind of song. This article is about the specialist narrow kind of music called "traditional music" - an academic historical subject, written about by scholars. This article isn't for you, and this kind of music isn't for you. This article is for scholars, singing dry old songs and historical relics. We like dry historical relics and dusty books. Go away. Don't bother us in our nice library and nice museum. Put you comments onto the "Folk music" article instead, not here. Ogg (talk) 18:33, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: *I didn't mean to get your goat, ma'am, and I sure don't mean to suggest anything. If this is the article that applies to songs like "On Top of Old Smoky", "La Cucaracha", or "Sir Patrick Spens"—songs popularly recited today but dating from an age that makes the authors virtually unknowable—then this is the one I mean. If this article applies to songs like "Blowin' in the Wind" or "Teach Your Children" (modern songs written in a folk-like manner), then you are right, this isn't what I want. In any case, everything in the article may be true, but in its current state it is disjointed, declarations aren't cited, and, as a whole, it's difficult to understand. I have no interest in a tar baby dust up, though, so I'll leave it to your good efforts. TestsPoint (talk) 00:47, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Down with formalism 

message: Bravely, and probably foolishly, I plan to do a clean-up of this article and Folk music, taking into account the points above where possible, adding citations and trying to place material in the right article. If you have any points you think need to be addressed in such a process please let me know here. I will give some time before beginning so that this can be done fairly.--Sabrebd (talk) 11:13, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Good luck - you'll need it... Hohenloh 18:08, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Clean-up time

message: The first paragraph talks about Grammy Awards terminology change not about traditional music. Please, is there anybody feeling strong enough in the field to give a traditional music definition into the first paragraph? In my opinion Grammy Awards should not be mentioned there at all. --pabouk (talk) 07:29, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Strongly agree. the first sentence of an article covering worldwide music for thousands of years starts with the Grammy Awards?!?! Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:17, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: What we're really talking about is creating a lead for this hard-to-define topic.  I'll make a first attempt at it, which would be just a starting point.  North8000 (talk) 14:18, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Now the Grammy Awards have dropped the term "Traditional Music" North8000 (talk) 12:56, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  The first paragraph talks about '''Grammy Awards''' terminology change 

message: I was thinking of deleting the last two paragraphs, whick means the last paragraph in the "North America" sub-section and the entire  "Combining reductionist and holistic views" subsection.  This is basically an abstract unsourced discussion of the structure of music in general. There's really nothing in there that relates to traditional music specifically, and it really makes no connection to traditional music in the material. 
Does anybody object to me removing it?  Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 11:48, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I am fine with the removal. It looks like unsourced WP:OR and frankly is pretty hard to understand for the general reader.--SabreBD (talk) 12:51, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. It's original research and not terribly relevant to an understanding of traditional music. I say get rid of it. --Kohoutek1138 (talk) 13:35, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

text: OK here goes. North8000 (talk) 13:40, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Delete last two paragraphs?

message: We're discussing possible changes at the Folk music article that could relate to this article.  See Folk music#Possible reorganization or split of article    Also some discussions on genre divisions/terminology  that could address some of the issues discussed in this talk page above.  Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:12, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The discussion is leaning towards cutting the Folk Music article in half, and moving half of the material into this article.  (=  a major change here).   Would there be any objections to that?  Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 00:03, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: We decided to do that. North8000 (talk) 13:36, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Didn't do it due to new developments.  See talk at Folk music page and below. North8000 (talk) 03:26, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Discussion of changes at [[Folk music]] article 

message: We have been continuing with the process described above, and now need to decide if we actually want to go through with it vs. some alternative.  The possibilities would include major changes to this article (such as overwriting with an expanded version developed there).   The discussion is at the Folk music article talk page.  Your feedback / comments / input is requested.  Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 11:36, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Important request for comments / input

message: Most discussions have occurred at the Folk music article, but since the idea I'm bringing up more heavily impacts this article, I'm moving it here.  
Well, the term "traditional music" as genre to help sort this out sort of ran out of steam. The Grammys dropped the term (not the music). In hindsight, certain thoughts on this have been reinforced. "Folk music" is a well established term which clearly includes two heavily-overlapping large, vaguely defined genres which could be described as traditional music and music of and which grew out of the main 20th century US-centered folk revival, plus some smaller similar revivals elsewhere.  The term "traditional music" is widely used, but more as a descriptive term rather than as a genre-defining term. I kind of mentally set the article naming questions aside for a 1/2 year to instead just focus on building the folk music article.   It's scope inevitably has included covering pretty much everything that is in the Traditional music article; I explained at the time that I was doing that in case there was feedback on that. I put the rest of this into a new section to give it more visibility.  (by North8000)
===Proposed merge of this article into Folk music article=== 
(Continued from previous section) I'm thinking that the best plan might be to turn the traditional music article into a redirect into the folk music article.  There's no hurry, I thought we could let this sit here for a month or two so see if there are any thoughts on this. North8000 (talk) 12:31, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, it's been about two months and there have been no objections.  (actually no comments).  I am going to slowly start the process of turning this into a redirect to Folk music.   In order to not losa any material I am going to pare material tht is duplicated / moved bit by bit until it is stub and then do the redirect.   I believe that all of the material is already in the Folk music article. North8000 (talk) 03:32, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: For what it's worth, I agree that merging this article into the folk music one is the sensible thing to do. The existence of a separate "Traditional music" article has always puzzled me. Go for it! --Kohoutek1138 (talk) 13:45, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks!  It was getting lonely here.  :-) North8000 (talk) 14:40, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: It is mostly done.  The remaining area is categories.  I'm going to have to learn a bit more in that area to handle that properly.  North8000 (talk) 15:23, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Took care of them.  Actually they were mostly interlanguage links.
I will be placing an extra copy of this talk page at Talk:Folk_music/FromTraditionalMusicArticleMarch2012  Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 01:16, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Summary/update on folk music and traditional music article deliberations

message: (Continued from previous section) I'm thinking that the best plan might be to turn the traditional music article into a redirect into the folk music article.  There's no hurry, I thought we could let this sit here for a month or two so see if there are any thoughts on this. North8000 (talk) 12:31, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, it's been about two months and there have been no objections.  (actually no comments).  I am going to slowly start the process of turning this into a redirect to Folk music.   In order to not losa any material I am going to pare material tht is duplicated / moved bit by bit until it is stub and then do the redirect.   I believe that all of the material is already in the Folk music article. North8000 (talk) 03:32, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: For what it's worth, I agree that merging this article into the folk music one is the sensible thing to do. The existence of a separate "Traditional music" article has always puzzled me. Go for it! --Kohoutek1138 (talk) 13:45, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks!  It was getting lonely here.  :-) North8000 (talk) 14:40, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: It is mostly done.  The remaining area is categories.  I'm going to have to learn a bit more in that area to handle that properly.  North8000 (talk) 15:23, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Took care of them.  Actually they were mostly interlanguage links.
I will be placing an extra copy of this talk page at Talk:Folk_music/FromTraditionalMusicArticleMarch2012  Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 01:16, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed merge of this article into [[Folk music]] article