What are the particular challenges of managing folk music in an increasingly global context?

The music industry is undoubtedly dominated by multinational media conglomerates,

making it impossible to talk about managing musical institutions without reference to their global

context (Smiers, 2003). Modern capitalism has created international standards for copyright law and

intellectual property, which are applied cut-and-dry to all musical products, regardless of form.

Anthony McCann, citing Ronald V. Bettig, claims that ‘at this stage in history it is almost impossible

to separate intellectual property from its role as an instrument of commodification within capitalist

systems’ (Bettig, 1996 in McCann, 2001: 93). However, certain types of music are incompatible with

commodification, particularly folk or traditional musics (Seeger, 2004). With these issues in mind,

this essay will examine the particular challenges of managing folk music in England.

Whether or not folk music can be seen as a living tradition depends on its definition, making

it particularly challenging for managers of folk music to know what it is they are managing. ‘Folk’ as a

genre is currently enjoying success in the popular music industry, but the term often refers to

commercial artists playing in a ‘folk’ style, which purists might argue invalidates its claim on the

word. Therefore, the first section of this essay will test some scholarly definitions of folk music. The

second section will consider how the globalised music industry’s standards of intellectual property

are inappropriate for folk music, leading to a shrinking of the public domain (Smiers, 2003; Seeger,

2004; Jones and Cameron, 2005; McCann, 2001). The final section will examine folk music

institutions in England, which have become increasingly important in managing traditions that

cannot be sustained in their natural environment. I will consider the challenges arising from

managing such institutions under the dual pressures of commercialism and cultural diversity.

This essay will not discuss the management of ‘English folk music’ but rather ‘folk music in

England’. This is partly because much folk music is regional, and freely crosses national borders:

Northumbrian folk music, for instance, has more in common with the Scottish tradition than that of

East Anglia. Folk music is more likely to become bound up with a nation-state when coerced into

doing so to meet political ends (Keegan-Phipps, 2007). Furthermore, folk music is managed quite

differently in Ireland and Scotland, where it is part of a wider heritage, encompassing language and

other traditions. Scottish and Irish folk music are exported on a far wider scale, and thus have a far

greater international presence as part of the countries’ respective nation-branding strategies

(Keegan-Phipps, 2007: 92). Enough has been written about the ‘communal Prozac of the [Irish]

heritage industry’ (Luke Gibbons in McCann, 2001: 89), shown through international successes such

as Riverdance, for there to be little need to repeat these arguments here. Finally, England has a

much larger foreign-born population than its neighbours, creating a problematic relationship

between indigenous folk culture and a multicultural population. I will now turn to the first section of

my essay, where I will examine some definitions of folk music.

I - Defining Folk Music

Setting limits in a discussion of folk music brings a whole range of problems. The founder of

the Roud Folk Song Index himself describes the term ‘folk song’ as ‘annoyingly ambiguous’ (Roud

2012, xxxii). Roud takes any song ‘learnt and performed by non-professionals in informal, non-

commercial settings’ (ibid, xii) as a working definition, but acknowledges its inadequacy in fully

elaborating on the term’s connotations. The non-commercial settings referred to include homes,

workplaces (such as mines, fishing boats, and fields) and ‘third places’, typically village pubs. The

non-professionals in question are the elusive ‘folk,’ typically uneducated village-dwellers living in

pre-industrialised areas of rural England.

Central to Roud’s definition is the idea of oral transmission. Folk music is not a literate

tradition, but is learned and passed down by word of mouth. Cecil Sharp, an early folk song collector,

describes a Darwinian process of continuity, variation, and selection (in Keegan-Phipps, 2006: 263).

Individuals add variations to existing songs, and those preferred by the community survive and

become part of a common stock. This stock is an open source available to all members of the

community, and new songs are created through the reassembly of old stock. Keeping with the

evolutionary metaphor, folk music can be seen as an organically occurring musical process, the

expression of social relationships rather than a tradable commodity. With industrialisation, it is clear

that these community structures - if they ever truly existed – have waned. They have taken with

them the potential for maintaining the puritanical image of folk music. Traditional music is now

almost exclusively the domain of ‘third places’ such as folk clubs, having little place in home and

work life. It has changed from being the music of the working class to that of special-interest groups.

It is no longer a naturally occurring phenomenon exempt from management, but an aspect of

heritage which some people feel is in need of careful protection and preservation.

However, the extent to which folk music can be described as heritage is debatable: it is

flawed to think of an unbroken line between the mythical past and the modern world. Folk music

reached the majority of the modern world through the very deliberate process of collection and

dissemination during the two major ‘English folk revivals’. In The Imagined Village, (Boyes: 1993)

Georgina Boyes argues that contemporary folk music is by nature inauthentic. She claims that the

actors behind each of these revivals have ingrained their own philosophy and world-view on what is

considered to be folk music. The first folk revival took place around the turn of the twentieth

century. Georgina Boyes describes it as a ‘rescue mission’ (Boyes, 1993: 1). She calls to mind images

of English gentlemen going to ‘knock on unknown cottage doors with a request that the inhabitants

sing to [them]’ (ibid: 41), hoping to snatch up the last remnants of an oral tradition soon to be swept

away by industrialisation. The revival was tied up with class: upper and middle class folk song

collectors studied the music of the poorest classes, and fought for its inclusion in educational

programmes, all in the name of English nationalism. Boyes argued that the village-dweller was

fictionalised and idealised for political ends. The post-war folk revival of the 40s, 50s and 60s had a

more bottom-up approach, and had more to do with protest and left-wing politics than nationalist

agendas. It was less bound up with authenticity and traditional song than the first movement, and

was heavily influenced by American culture. It also heralded the popular genre of folk-rock, which

combined traditional song with contemporary influences. Singers such as Anne Briggs released

albums of traditional songs, but also wrote their own material. Any member of the Sharpian ‘folk’

could legitimately do this, but can it still be considered folk when it is directed towards a wide

audience and commercial gain?

With this question in mind, it could be asked what this means for a contemporary popular

English artist such as Laura Marling, whose music is frequently categorised as ‘folk’. Marling has

been nominated for BBC Radio 2 Folk Music awards, and has headlined at the Cambridge Folk

Festival, yet she is a professional musician performing and selling music in a commercial setting,

contrary to Roud’s definition of folk music. For Boyes (1993) the answer is simple: she suggests that

such music is related to folk in name alone, and should be ignored in serious discussions of folk

music. I disagree, and would argue any discussion of folk music must consider the popular

understanding of the term. Jones and Cameron (2005: 260) acknowledge a tendency to over-apply

the label, but add that ‘it would take a real purist not to acknowledge that much modern music has

been written in a traditional style and assimilated to what many would now call folk music’. Their

(ibid.) definition of folk as ‘music originating among the common people of a nation or region and

spread about or passed down orally’ is useful for its emphasis on ‘origins’, and implies that placing a

folk song in a commercial setting does not somehow invalidate its status as a folk song. Therefore as

long as a piece of commercial folk music originates from a non-commercial setting, it can be

considered as folk. It is open for debate as to what aspects of a piece of commercial music must have

origins in a non-commercial economy for this to happen. Should it be a question of the wholesale

reproduction of material- musical and lyrical? Or simply the adoption of certain characteristics

associated with traditional music, such as instrumentation and vocal style, lyrical subject matter, or

harmonic vocabulary?

McCann (2001) discusses whether musical sound can be said to carry the philosophy of the

value system from which it emerged. Quoting Sahlins’ (1972) theory of ‘kinship distance,’ McCann

asserts that as music moves away from its origin, it becomes more likely to be commodified, and less

likely to pass on values (2001: 95). This returns to the idea that while the music of a popular artist

such as Laura Marling undoubtedly sounds like folk, as a piece of commercial music it cannot

necessarily be considered to carry ‘authentic’ folk values. What should we expect these values to

be? Nationalism, in the style of the first folk revival, or liberalism, in the style of the second? It could

be asked whether musical sound can legitimately carry either.

A modern equivalent of ancient folk practices can be found with ‘bedroom DJs’. These

amateur musicians sample from a communal pool of music, (much of which is admittedly not in the

public domain in a legal sense) and reassemble this stock into new music. Margaret Farrel quotes

Breathnach as saying ‘[i]t is the refashioning and re-creation of the music by the community that

gives it its folk character’ (Farrel, 2003). Many share their music for free online- in a non-commercial

setting- amongst communities of fellow musicians. The resemblance to the purist definition of folk

music is striking, but there are few who would refer to this music as ‘folk’. Clearly those definitions

that would see folk purely in terms of musical practice, ignoring musical style, are not in step with

the dominant use of the word in contemporary society. It is an unavoidable fact that to talk about

‘folk music’ is to simultaneously refer to the explicitly non-commercial setting that gives rise to such

music, and the stylistic characteristics of that music, which can of course be appropriated in

commercial settings. In this essay I will consider both folk-as-style and folk-as-practice, to borrow

terms from McCann (2001). Having discussed the definition of folk music, I will now go on examine

the issue of folk music and ownership.

II - Folk Music and Ownership

One specific challenge that arises from attempts to manage folk music is the problem of

ownership. Here it is difficult to reconcile the disagreements, as each side of the debate has a

fundamentally different definition of what ownership is. Parties such as the World Trade

Organisation define music ownership through copyright, a temporary monopoly over certain aspects

of a musical work (Frith and Marshall, 2005), whilst folk communities define ownership as something

more vague, social and special. On some level all ownership can be considered as symbolic, being

based on accepted social norms and constraints: copyright is simply an attempt to ratify pre-existing

symbolic notions of ownership. Applying copyright law to folk music puts it in the public domain due

to its age and lack of identifiable author, so folk song can be freely drawn from in the creation of

new copyrightable works. But typically certain communities feel they have a greater claim on the

music than others, particularly when commercialism enters the equation.

Amateur folk music is part of a gift economy, argues McCann (2001: 93): performers in a pub

session offer ‘risk of self, the tunes, the songs, the chat, the shared experience’ with no formal

guarantee of returns. McCann makes a direct link between gift economy and communal ownership,

quoting an anonymous folk musician as saying ‘if somebody's trying to learn it… it's not yours, so it's

not like you can hold back’ (ibid. 93). However, within this symbolic gift economy there is scope for

more personal notions of ownership. Roud claims that ‘it was common practice for people to ‘own’

particular songs. These were songs for which they were so well known that no one else in the

community would dream of singing them in their presence’ (Roud, xxix). The performer who

exercises a monopoly over a particular song in this way is not necessarily its author; they may just be

particularly good at singing it. This kind of ownership retains an emphasis on community and

commonly understood social practices. It is not within the scope of this essay to outline the

complexities of song ownership in folk networks, it is enough to acknowledge that traditional

community understandings of property are subtler than those implied by intellectual property

regimes.

This attitude extends beyond the gift economy of amateur music-making and into the folk

record industry. If an artist records an arrangement of a folk song it is within their rights to copyright

that arrangement. However, another artist could only be seen as infringing upon that copyright if

their arrangement is precisely the same (Jones and Cameron, 2005: 268). Within folk communities

there exists an unwritten rule about citing sources and influential arrangements, a sort of ‘honesty-

box’ policy. This may involve a pre-amble in a live concert, or the liner notes of a physical release.

When these rules are broken, folk communities feel betrayed. Johansson and Berge (2014) describe

a situation in Norway where a public domain folk song, Natta Vi Har, performed by pop singer

Helene Bøksle, became a popular hit. Despite Natta Vi Har being heavily derivative of traditional

singer Agner Buen Garnås’ earlier arrangement of another traditional song, Bøksle was able to claim

author’s rights in Norway. This led the Norwegian folk community to demand changes in copyright

law. They saw the fact that Bøksle had legally done nothing wrong as a red flag, exposing the

vulnerability of the public domain.

This is an example of Hardin’s model of the ‘tragedy of the commons’, which can be used to

demonstrate the incompatibility of folk music with intellectual property regimes (McCann, 2001).

Hardin (1968) suggests that when a community shares a common resource, if unmanaged, each

member will act in their own interest rather than that of the group, thereby exhausting the resource.

Taking the metaphor of a common pasture, Garret writes that each of the herdsmen grazing his

cattle there receives personal benefits from doing so, whilst the cost of overgrazing is spread

amongst the group. It would benefit the group if each herdsman were to graze fewer cattle, but this

will never happen in an unmanaged commons, as it would involve each herdsman acting to his own

disadvantage. As the field is overgrazed, each herdsman can comfort himself with the idea that if

they were to refrain from using the field, someone else would take his place anyway.

In the gift economy that gave rise to folk music, when a member of a community played a

communally owned song in a pub, it in no way depleted the shared resource. Introducing copyright

makes the situation a zero-sum game, in which the public resource is reduced as it is utilised. Folk

music’s reliance on stock phrases and the construction of music through reassembling old materials

means that when folk songs are privatised, traditional material becomes locked out of the public

domain. This means that newly composed folk songs are obliged to become less traditional. McCann

(2001) refers to this as ‘corralling’- the gradual and incremental takeover of the public sector by

private bodies. Copyright, ostensibly put in place to encourage creativity by ensuring artists are fairly

remunerated for their work, thereby erodes musical traditions that favour continuity, variation, and

selection (Jones and Cameron, 2005: 264). Paradoxically, the World Intellectual Property

Organisation describes tradition as ‘an important source of creativity and innovation’ in 2003 (ibid.

273).

Jones and Cameron (2005) consider Lessig’s concept of the Creative Commons Licence as a

way forward for English folk music. Creative Commons licensing allows the copyright holder to

reserve and waive rights at their discretion, but, in the case of traditional music, who should be

responsible for these decisions if original owners cannot be found? They conclude that it cannot

succeed, as it remains too heavily based on the paradigm of intellectual property (ibid: 272). Those

with the most intellectual authority over traditional music are the least willing to license it, due to

their obligations to the wider folk community. This leaves the music vulnerable to those who have

less social claim on it, as shown by the Bøksle case. Even open source licences, typically found in IT,

require the original owner to place a work as open source. In folk music previous copyright holders

of similar arrangements could at any point challenge the placement of the work as open source (ibid.

271-272).

There are calls for a radical overhaul of copyright law to protect traditional music. Jones and

Cameron ask for ‘a system more attuned to traditional knowledge’ (2005: 273), Seeger for ‘changed

ethics’ and ‘recognition that not all music is necessarily appropriate to becoming a commodity’

(2004: 169) and McCann for a legal system that can endorse a ‘paradigm shift from the dominant

folklore-as-materials to folklore-as-practice’ (2001: 98). If we accept that current intellectual

property regimes are incapable of protecting authentic folk music, then the management of this

music falls to institutions: I will now examine this in more detail.

III - Folk Institutions and Authenticity

Simon Keegan-Phipps (2007) sees the institutionalisation of folk music as a necessary step in

its preservation, but one with a problematic past. Folk institutions have commonly been used as part

of social engineering programmes, and tend to strip away ‘authenticity’ in the name of instrumental

goals. Folk music is commonly used to promote national identity, but in multicultural countries this

causes problems. Keegan-Phipps worries that many members of the folk community believe ‘English

identity is under threat from immigration’ and ‘authorities who seek a “politically correct” image’

(2007: 92). An extreme example of this would be the recent controversy that surrounded David

Cameron’s photo opportunity with a group of ‘blacked-up’ Morris Dancers (McSmith, 2014). In

parallel with the yearly ‘Zwarte Piet’ debate in the Netherlands, it raised questions about the origins

of the tradition: supporters argue it stems from miners rubbing soot on their faces to disguise their

identity whilst begging, while critics see it as a racist depiction of Moorish pirates (hence ‘Morris’).

Obviously the motivations behind such a tradition’s origins are in some sense unknowable, but this

extreme example illustrates the some of the common difficulties. Folk culture can be exclusive, and

seen as an aggressive attempt to enforce a dominant national identity. The manager of a folk music

institution is met by the challenge of celebrating authentic traditional music without promoting

cultural chauvinism. They must also be able to keep the institution afloat in a capitalist economy,

without compromising authenticity.

The most well known folk institution in England is the English Folk Dance and Song Society

(EFDSS). Their triple purpose is to undertake folk education, artist development, and political

advocacy for folk music interests. They are supported by ‘3000 individuals and 800 organisations’ on

a subscription basis (EFDSS, n.d.). Arts Council England (ACE) first gave it funding in 2009 (ACE, 2010).

In 2009-11 EDFSS was granted £400,000 a year, dropping to £300,000 in 2012 and creeping up to

£314,879 by 2014. ACE has recently announced an increase to £432,046 per annum to fund the

creation of an audience and donor development programme in Cecil Sharp House, as well as a ‘youth

folk music ensemble’ (EFDSS, 2014). For Keegan-Phipps (2007: 87), for whom the idea of a folk

orchestra resonates with the Soviet cultural policy- the latter would perhaps set off alarm bells, but

ACE’s rhetoric has little to do with nation-branding and more to do with backing a winning market.

This is encapsulated in ACE’S statement that ‘with both world-class artists and exciting young

performers attracting interest and breaking into the mainstream, there is an increasing array of key

work that we have supported, and have planned for the future, to continue to help challenge

perceptions and nurture English folk music’ (ACE, 2010).

This challenges the purist definitions of folk music encountered earlier in the essay and begs

the question of whether folk music could ‘break into the mainstream’ without being stripped of its

essential philosophy through commodification. The issue is compounded by the paradox that a piece

of music considered as ‘authentic’ will sell better, surely commodifying it further. Richard Taruskin

(in Wilson, 2011: 161) dismisses authenticity as promoters’ ‘propaganda’, but these days it is

impossible to ignore market forces (ibid). An organisation such as EFDSS is obliged to work with the

market to receive the funding which enables its continued existence. This enables it to undertake

groundbreaking projects such as 2014’s ‘Full English’, which made 80,000 pages of traditional music

from the Ralph Vaughan Williams library available in a free digital archive. This project made a

wealth of English folk music available to anyone with an Internet connection, a huge achievement

for the nurturing of traditional music.

The BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, started in 2000, is another project backed by public money,

but brings up different issues. On the surface these awards support the whole spectrum of what

could be referred to as folk music: even having a ‘best original song’ category for folk-influenced

commercial artists. However, concerns have been raised about the selection process of these artists:

Laura Marling has been nominated for best original song, while the more successful Mumford and

Sons, arguably just as influenced by folk, never have. The BBC has refused to disclose the identities

of the judges of the Folk Awards, even in the face of Freedom of Information requests (Hartley,

2013). This means an anonymous and unaccountable group of people from the folk community are

able to set the definition of ‘folk’, apparently somewhat arbitrarily. I would argue the awards run the

risk of creating the ‘folk music elite’ that Keegan-Phipps (2007: 102) warned institutionalisation

could lead to.

Conclusion

In this essay I have tried to show that when thinking of folk music in a modern context it is

necessary to think of it in a global context, in an industry dominated by multinational companies.

Defining ‘folk’ as referring both to a non-commercial musical practice and a range of musical styles

that have roots in this practice, I expressed concern about protectionist and exclusive attitudes

towards the term. Puritanical definitions, that describe folk music purely in terms of its role in a gift

economy, are thwarted by the fact that contemporary musicians working in gift economies are

seldom referred to as folk musicians. Some element of musical style is clearly involved. Copyright

law, the standard tool the industry uses to protect intellectual property, is not sufficient to protect

folk music in the public domain. None of the alternatives discussed in the second section, such as

Creative Commons and Open Source licensing, are perfect, being too steeped in the intellectual

property paradigm (Jones and Cameron, 2005). The threat of a shrinking public domain remains very

real, and further research is needed to find workable alternatives to current intellectual property

regimes and avoid the tragedy of the unmanaged commons. At the moment, it falls to dedicated

institutions to protect folk music: I believe it is essential for these institutions to accept a broad and

non-protectionist conception of folk music such as I have described. In this way they can utilise the

success of commercial folk-as-style music to win funding that can be used to preserve and promote

more traditional but less marketable folk-as-practice. The success of folk-inspired popular music

should not be seen as a threat to the integrity of heritage, but as a means of bringing it to a wider

audience.

To conclude, it is worth stating that the founders of the first folk music degree in England

claim that while they encountered significant difficulties reconciling folk practice with higher

education, they felt that if they did not do it ‘then somebody else [was] going to do it, and maybe in

a way that [they] really wouldn’t agree with’ (Kathryn Tickel in Keegan-Phipps, 2007: 103). The same

argument could be extended to the management of folk music: while folk purists may object to the

way ‘their’ music is used in the globalised music business, if they do not manage it, others will. The

management of folk music must necessarily be undertaken by those knowledgeable about a

vulnerable piece of heritage, but pragmatic enough to manage it in both commercial and non-

commercial settings. Yet, as demonstrated by the BBC Folk Music Awards, a degree of transparency

and accountability must be involved, to maintain an atmosphere of accessibility, and avoid the

creation of a musical elite which could hinder rather than help the tradition.

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