Comments on: Jersey Girl

By: Jeremy Main

Jeremy Main — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 01:01:25 +0000

I’ve discovered some of the youngsters around C#H have never heard the old warhorses of The National Tunebook. Now I’m most certainly going to insist that those arrangements are utterly and desperately wrong, but at the same time I’m wondering if the songs themselves are not beyond salvation.

By: Linda

Linda — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 16:20:11 +0000

Still love this one. !!!

By: Diana

Diana — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 10:17:09 +0000

And why not? Laughter is a tonic and I enjoy your inane comments Muzza.

By: Muzza(NW Surrey-UK)

Muzza(NW Surrey-UK) — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 08:54:04 +0000

I know some REALLY old folk songs…
you can tell they are really old by the Lyrics
‘Keep right on to the end of the Woad’
‘I left my Woad in Sanfrancisco’
Sorry AFSAD’ers..I’m having another silly 5 minutes!

By: Diana

Diana — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 07:09:54 +0000

Jon sings it so well but a folk song it is not. I do like the concertina thougn.

By: John Biggs (Welsh Marches)

John Biggs (Welsh Marches) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 17:09:29 +0000

Amen to that Simon.

By: Simon

Simon — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 09:04:56 +0000

No apologies or sorrow needed Phil... It's genuinely interesting and I certainly didn't intend to have a pop. I was just trying to make the point that we are too close to Jersey Girl, besides which it exists in recorded format. The very fact that an individual's performance can be now kept, theoretically for ever has changed the landscape of music irrevocably. But if singers sing Jersey Girl, is that not the same process that took say Lord Randall or Tam Lin from just being songs to being folk songs. It's not now, but 100 years and more when those songs that have gone through that process and are still being sung, even revived, will become the genuine folk music of that generation. I'd love to be around to see what happens, but will have long since danced the doleful dance... Over the year of doing this my apprecation of the wealth of the tradition grew exponentially. But with that came the certain knowledge that the origins and process by which songs survive are often shrouded and arcane. Yet survive they do pouring from the lips of singers. Whatever the material, I pray that never stops.

By: Phil

Phil — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 18:40:00 +0000

I guess there are just some people who think of ‘folk’ as something you can define (& which you may or may not like) & some who think that if you like it you can say it’s folk, probably, kind of, close enough. I listen to lots of contemporary music – I even sing contemporary songs (I think they’re actually in the majority on 52 Folk Songs at the moment). I just don’t think they’re folk songs.

But I’m sorry to have opened the Endless Question up again – I should have resisted the temptation!

By: Simon

Simon — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 09:12:26 +0000

Aaah! The old debate surfaces again. I understand your preference for the tradition Phil, but if songs get sung the tradition moves on. Who’s to say what singers 200 years hence will be singing. It may be this one it may not, either way it doesn’t much matter and there’s no amount of ring-fencing today that will make any difference. It simply won’t be our choice. I prefer to think of folk as still alive rather than having reached it’s end with the broadsides. That is my choice and my taste, that is all.

By: Phil

Phil — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 06:33:42 +0000

What the old songs have is history

Exactly. They’ve lasted (and generally changed along the way). That’s what makes ‘em folk songs.