The Sixties, and Folk Music

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The cultural developments in the US roughly in the years 1960 - 1969 (The Sixties) consisted of a rich mix of political and ideological, cultural, sociological, psychological, and artistic developments. While we're here concerned chiefly with Sixties music, especially what has come to be known as Folk (in contrast to "folk music", a term whose definition is firmly under the control of ethnomusicologists), it's important to keep an eye on the surrounding climate of ideas.

Briefly, The Fifties had already seen an interesting change. In the past, young people growing up had resented adult supervision, but accepted the need to merge into adult culture, despite reservations they may have held about its value or reasonability. In the fifties, though, for various historical reasons, the desire to distance themselves from mainstream "adult" culture rose to the level of total rejection.  By the time the sixties arrived, Teen Culture was already established as a phenomenon, where the youth considered the approval of their friends more valuable than the approval of "anyone over thirty."

As important as the teen revolution was the steady rise of educated and articulate black Americans throughout the USA. There was a significant African-American presence among US troops in WW2, and the majority of Americans began to notice Black leaders they could admire, and whose ideals and aspirations they could subscribe to.

Capitalist Culture, the pre-eminent ideal in the USA, is hard to identify with [at the best of times], especially for the children of poor professionals and farmers throughout the country who were beginning to be marginalized by the relentless advances of American Business and industry. The large cities became home to vast numbers of unemployed, some unemployed through economic reversals, some simply through choice. This was fertile ground for the rise of Socialist thinking, where the economic advancement of the individual takes second place to the advancement of society. The so-called Cold War, and the Vietnam war were probably the greatest influence on the youth of the sixties. With the prospect of total annihilation apparently hanging over them, the US establishment (namely the employed adults and the government) began to lose any remaining scraps of allegiance on the part of the nation's youth.  

Music. The large record companies, decided to capitalize on the popularity of Rock 'n' Roll, and made a lot of money off the Teen culture. Rock stars became wealthy, and gradually became the target of teen discontent. The left edge of the so-called counter-culture needed a new music with which to express itself.

The Trade Union activists of the forties and fifties were joined by the famous singer Woody Guthrie. Poorly paid American workers were eager to join the unions, whose members enjoyed better pay negotiated for them by the Union leadership. Woody Guthrie was able to adapt American and British worker songs, with simple melodies, sung to an acoustic guitar. As other musicians were inspired by Guthrie's songs and his music, they also discovered older songs by unknown authors which expressed subtle discontent. Some names of this generation of musicians who sucessfully explored the folk music of the recent past are Ed McCurdy, Pete Seeger, and Burl Ives. The first two seem to have been more sympathetic to the political dissatisfaction that expressed itself as the Folk tradition evolved, while the sympathies of Burl Ives were not expressed in his music, and may have been quite conservative.

Gradually the music of Guthrie and Seeger and their contemporaries who explored songs enjoyed by the workers began to form the nucleus of a musical style that really had little to do with what musicologists call Folk Music. It was played on acoustic instruments: guitars and banjos, which were largely unamplified, except for the needs of recording; there was a careful balance between voices and instruments which enabled the lyrics to emerge (in contrast to the sounds of electric rock music), the harmonies were simpler, at least initially, and occasionally modal. It is this confluence of musical attributes that forms the nucleus of the musical tradition I'm calling Folk. It is not folk music, since it has not been transmitted through an oral tradition. It is not music or songs whose authors are unknown; the authors are actually well known most of the time, since much of this music was written in the latter half of the 2oth century. The only purely musical characteristic I can think of that is often found in Folk is the use of what are called "inessential notes", the decorative picking and tinkling that fills out the simple melodies of Folk.

An important member of the Guthrie era is Pete Seeger. Seeger was a happy combination of someone who was a critical and careful observer of the political and cultural scene, a citizen of the World (or as much of one as the Sixties had any right to expect), a gifted musician and musicologist, and a skilled performer. Best of all, he had a delightful sense of humor, which made his lyrics memorable. Keith Tonkin, on a page featuring an introduction to the life and achievements of Pete Seeger, quotes lyrics from an unnamed Pete Seeger song: “To Fight perchance to Win, aye there’s the rub. For Victory brings Power and Prestige, And the Children of the Children of the Fighters, Take all for granted and, in turn Opress.” The thought in that short verse goes further than the enlightened self-interest of the Trade Union movement, and it is not surprising that Seeger became something close to Public Enemy Number One in his heyday, because it seemed necessary for the Establishment to demand unquestioning approval in all matter of foreign policy from the general population. In contrast, Pete Seeger chose to put the words of Jose Marti, a Cuban poet, to a popular tune, to create Guantanamera, which (as I understand) expresses the aspirations of the Cuban working classes before the Cuban revolution.

Between the generation of Woody Guthrie and the folk musicians of the sixties stands Bob Dylan. Few artists of that time have had such a huge total impact on global culture as he, and it does not seem reasonable to class him with other artists (though there certainly have been some whose influence has been significant). Bob Dylan was able to express the overarching alienation of his generation in words and music, subsuming the anger against everything from bigotry, economic inequity, racial prejudice, political corruption, and the menace of war and weapons of mass destruction. (It is interesting that only the USA has actually used a conventional weapon of mass destruction, considering the deployment of aircraft as impact missiles to still be in the experimental stage). Here he is, singing The Times they are a-changing. Rather than give a list of topics addressed by Bob Dylan in his songs, I would like to merely point out that Bob Dylan made clear to the older generation --as well as less insightful members of his own-- exactly what his generation was angry about. The vague sense of contradiction, the feeling that the conventional wisdom expresses things that are logically inconsistent, comes out in the lyrics of his songs. The melodies are simple, to underscore the rhetoric of the words, and he often emphasized phrases with speech-like intonation which departed from the nominal melody of the line. His anger, however, was mixed with humor; it is hard to present anger all the time, without the relief of something else, no matter how sardonic. In contrast to those of Pete Seeger, though, Bob Dylan's lyrics -- for the most part-- are more personal and intense, and all references of people or events are indirect and figurative.

Immediately in the wake of Bob Dylan we find a host of musicians who adopted the Folk idiom, some to emphasize the musical aspects, others the protest aspects: Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, Arlo Guthrie, and Harry Belafonte to mention a few artists who have had international impact in Folk, and close behind them an amazing cluster of Folk groups, including the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Peter Paul and Mary, the Kingston Trio, The Seekers in Australia, and of course, Simon and Garfunkel. (I'm not being selective; any omissions are purely due to ignorance!) While my knowledge of these performers is minor and not uniform, I will give some songs that I know from these artists. Joan Baez, throughout her career, has been a serious musician first, and a political activist second, and this has been her strength. I express this opinion --and such a statement can only be a opinion, not a scientific fact-- only to contrast her with other artists, such as Bob Dylan, who is a political poet first, and whose music is hard to assess on a musical quality scale! To say that Joan Baez is a consummate musician does not detract from the seriousness with which she takes her responsibility as a world citizen. I recently saw, on YouTube, a video of her singing Finlandia unaccompanied. The lyrics of that anthem (presumably written long after the tune was composed by Jean Sibelius) are astonishingly Universalist, transcending petty nationalism, and it seemed to me that Ms Baez's choice of that song is symbolic of her philosophy of life, encompassing her activism on every level.

Judy Collins was first and last a musician. Her songs resonated with those who sought the beauty of simplicity, which was a significant sector of those who liked Folk. While on the one hand Folk provided a vehicle for protest and consciousness-awakening and the conveying of serious ideas about society and politics, many were attracted to Folk simply because it provided an alternative to the industrial sound and the technology-driven instruments of both classical music and Rock music. (A similar sentiment was fueling a movement within classical music itself, namely the interest in early music and Renaissance and Baroque instruments.) Judy Collin's early songs were accompanied by the soft sounds of acoustic guitar, and later the sounds of a small string ensemble, a piano, and possibly a couple of winds. Her voice, too, was unaffected, the voice of the girl next door, expressive, but not uncomfortably emotional, and this remained a hallmark of her singing style throughout her career.

Arlo Guthrie, the son of Woody, having grown up in a musical family, was an influential singer, representing the edgier side of Folk that spoke of the concerns of the members of his generation who were disenchanted with their lives to the extent of exploring the drug culture. Where Bob Dylan expressed his anger at the establishment, Arlo Guthrie seemed to me to be expressing his ridicule. At any rate, his voice had great character, which together with his clever lyrics, filled an important niche in world of Sixties Folk.   The City of new Orleans is a song frequently sung by Arlo Guthrie. I give this link despite the fact that the song has a more Country sensibility than a Folk one.

Harry Belafonte, in some ways, could have been expected to have the most difficult time of making a career out of folk song. (Before him, of course, Paul Robeson had brilliantly advanced the cause of Black Spirituals, an achievement sadly neglected in the latter half of the 20th century.) Harry Belafonte actually began singing in the fifties, and his vehicle was actually folk-songs of the Caribbean, or Calypso, into which it evolved, a mixture of African rhythms, latin music, and influences from all the places in the Earth from which the caribbean folk came. Though he could have been expected to be most occupied with the problems of Black Americans, his sympathies were far wider, encompassing the needs of underdogs of all races. As a result, he presented many songs that flowed from the protest songs of those times, including the songs of the Folk tradition. In one sense, he was always the Entertainer, and as such, somewhat removed from the image of a singer of Folk.

The Kingston Trio evidently dated from before Bob Dylan, and their music was less political in the beginning. But the Vietnam War made its impact throughout college campuses in the USA, and not surprisingly singing the song Where have all the flowers gone, popularized by Pete Seeger, drew them into the protest movement within the Folk idiom.

The Byrds was a group that recorded some of the best of Pete Seeger's and Bob Dylan's songs, using electrified acoustic instruments, and close harmony. They have been influenced by a number of groups that came before, such as the Beatles, who were most definitely not within the Folk tradition. Very quickly, they attracted a host of fans who liked the edgier sound of electric guitars, especially the 12-string guitar, which became almost the banner of the Folk sound of the late sixties. No matter how electrified the guitars, though, there was a core acoustic sound in the music, and in principle, the music was performable without any amplification at all. This was not quite true for most of Rock and Jazz music. One of the most important songs released by the Byrds was Pete Seeger's Turn, Turn, Turn, a song widely recorded at the time, and whose recordings number about a score at the present time; Bob Dylan's Hey Mr Tambourine Man was a major hit for this group, and these two songs signaled a new face for Rock: edgy, electrified, jangly acoustic music, with harmony.

My chronology gets a bit vague at this point, especially because many groups that today are almost synonymous with the sixties did not immediately become well known, and all influenced each other to a great degree.

Two of the most charismatic and talented Folk groups of the Sixties, in my humble opinion, were Peter Paul and Mary, and The Seekers. Both these groups recorded many of the songs of Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger most admired by Folk fans generally, and had huge followings of their own. The Australian group, the Seekers, though they recorded and performed much of the time in Britain, were regarded highly in the British Commonwealth. Completely acoustic in their instrumentals, those who admired a switched-off sound were drawn to them. Lead singer Judy Durham's glorious gospel-like mezzo-soprano was also a major attraction. The songs of Tom Springfied was the final clincher to their immense popularity. Unfortunately, this Folk powerhouse was little enjoyed in insular US. Here they are, singing I'll never find another you.

Peter, Paul and Mary was a trio put together by an impressario, which succeeded beyond anyone's wildest expectations, mostly because of the intelligence, talent, and laid-back musicality of the three principals. To many, it is their renditions of the songs of Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan that are the definitive performances of those songs to this day: 500 miles; If I had a hammer; Don't think twice, it's alright.  Both the Seekers and PP&M sang songs from the folk repertoire outside the protest genre; for instance their rendition of Gordon Lightfoot's That's what you get for loving me is the one that sticks in my own mind. By the end of the Sixties, the messages and the philosophy in the songs of the protest movement were beginning to address more intimate values and wisdom, such as those of interpersonal relationships, the new morality, child-rearing, domestic violence, the environment, and so on. By the end of the seventies, the straightforward political ideals of the sixties no longer resonated with the younger Folk audience, who were more in tune to the implicit individualism of the Folk idiom than its anti-establishment ideals. Gradually, too, Folk was becoming important more for its musical characteristics than for its message.

One of the turning points in Folk, to my mind, was the Woodstock Folk Festival, which, in its early part, featured a new style of Folk, which had Rock, Country, and Gospel elements, as well as the subtle influence of the subversive drug culture. Young people torn between the intellectual rebel characteristics of the protest movement, as well as the opt-out flavor of the drug culture found a confluence in this synthesis with which they could identify.

Crosby, Stills and Nash (CSN), sometimes joined by Young (CSNY) was an enormously talented group, consisting of alumni of Buffalo Springfield, The Hollies, and The Byrds. This group, significantly influenced by Country sensibilities, had great musical talent, both innate musicianship and vocal ability. They were a distinctively American product.

Perhaps one of the greatest Folk acts ever was Simon and Garfunkel, carried by their wonderful vocal talents, and Paul Simon's amazing gift for lyrics and music. One has nightmares, trying to imagine the sixties and the seventies if these two had not come together to add their genius to Folk. After having sung several Bob Dylan songs: The Times, they are a Changing, Blowing in the Wind, they went on to release an amazing panoply of Folk material that began to define one end of the Folk spectrum, the end most closely tied to literary art and poetry. At that time, many artists were concerned with the darker aspects of society, fueled by the never-ending Vietnam War. There were no answers, but there were questions. The only thing that was clear was that This Was Not Good. Since then, we've all come to agree that Not Good-ness was here to stay, even when the Vietnam War ended.

As the sixties grew to a close, the roster of influential Folk singers also included James Taylor, John Denver, and several groups, who explored aspects of Folk that had little to do with social discontent, at least initially. James Taylor's songs varied in content, and introduced us to the sheer beauty of a voice that would have been considered unremarkable in earlier times. After Bob Dylan, of course, any voice would seem to have had potential. His "Fire and Rain" is heartbreaking and unforgettable, and has a rhetoric that is almost overwhelming. John Denver's songs had to do with the byways of America, and the great outdoors. With an almost manic insistence on the positive, they were hardly bettered for sheer musicality. Suddenly, Folk was not just about the negative side of life: anger, sorrow, alienation and worry, but about the glory of nature, the ecstasy of flight, the comfort of home, and the delight in children. There was also humor and satire in John Denver's live performances, but of a very gentle Midwestern flavor. The first of his songs that I heard: Country Roads, which could be considered a Country song, really. A hugely popular singer of Folk was Jim Croce, so much so that for some, he is synonymous with Folk. This is Operator. And from Britain, there was the wonderful Cat Stevens, one whose most loved songs is Peace Train. Another brilliant song by him, in fact a version of a hymn in the English Hymnal is Morning Has Broken. This is by no means a Folk piece, but Cat Stevens inexplicably makes it his own. Having taken the name Yusuf Islam, he performed the same song more recently. Evidently he has found a startling new gravity.

As with all such things, by the end of the seventies, Folk had splintered into many little slivers which bore little resemblance to each other. A number of artists carried on the prophetic tradition, continuing to comment on social injustice, and the new frontier: equality of women. These included Ani Di Franco, and a few Country acts which took on some Folk flavor. Other artists emphasized the Unplugged aspect of Folk, recording with acoustic instruments, attracting formerly mainstream Rock musicians to the strictly non-electric, non-electronic performance style.

A new generation came forward to blend Rock and Folk in new commentary on the excesses of Government and Big Business. It appears that Rock itself, a many-headed monster, has generated heads that are softer, adding aspects of Folk, and apparently now described as Alternate Rock. The opposite extreme is Heavy Metal, which delights in the extremes of guitar amplification and overpowering volume, and percussive uses of electric guitars. Finally, Latin artists emerged as talented Folk performers, notably Jose Feliciano. At the present time, Sixties Folk lives on, even if in disguise as Alternate Rock. Some of the best in Country music has been heavily influenced by Folk. The complex harmonies, the sophisticated picking techniques of Folk are everywhere. And the lyrics of popular music will never again be as simple as "I wanna hold your hand," an amusing title from the Beatles, the majority of whose lyrics left that early attempt far behind. Incidentally, the Beatles' "Yesterday" has a startlingly Folk feeling, though it is not by any means a Folk piece.

Archimedes, with a sigh of relief for having finally finished this one...

Speaking English Any Way They Like!

. Dearest creature in creation, Study English pronunciation. I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse. I will keep you, Suzy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in eye, your dress will tear. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer. Just compare heart, beard, and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word, Sword and sward, retain and Britain. (Mind the latter, how it's written.) Now I surely will not plague you With such words as plaque and ague. But be careful how you speak: Say break and steak, but bleak and streak; Cloven, oven, how and low, Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe. Hear me say, devoid of trickery, Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore, Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles, Exiles, similes, and reviles; Scholar, vicar, and cigar, Solar, mica, war and far; One, anemone, Balmoral, Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel; Gertrude, German, wind and mind, Scene, Melpomene, mankind. Billet does not rhyme with ballet, Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet. Blood and flood are not like food, Nor is mould like should and would. Viscous, viscount, load and broad, Toward, to forward, to reward. And your pronunciation's OK When you correctly say croquet, Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve, Friend and fiend, alive and live. Ivy, privy, famous; clamour And enamour rhyme with hammer. River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb, Doll and roll and some and home. Stranger does not rhyme with anger, Neither does devour with clangour. Souls but foul, haunt but aunt, Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant, Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger, And then singer, ginger, linger, Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge, Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age. Query does not rhyme with very, Nor does fury sound like bury. Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth. Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath. Though the differences seem little, We say actual but victual. Refer does not rhyme with deafer. Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer. Mint, pint, senate and sedate; Dull, bull, and George ate late. Scenic, Arabic, Pacific, Science, conscience, scientific. Liberty, library, heave and heaven, Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven. We say hallowed, but allowed, People, leopard, towed, but vowed. Mark the differences, moreover, Between mover, cover, clover; Leeches, breeches, wise, precise, Chalice, but police and lice; Camel, constable, unstable, Principle, disciple, label. Petal, panel, and canal, Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal. Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair, Senator, spectator, mayor. Tour, but our and succour, four. Gas, alas, and Arkansas. Sea, idea, Korea, area, Psalm, Maria, but malaria. Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean. Doctrine, turpentine, marine. Compare alien with Italian, Dandelion and battalion. Sally with ally, yea, ye, Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key. Say aver, but ever, fever, Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver. Heron, granary, canary. Crevice and device and aerie. Face, but preface, not efface. Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass. Large, but target, gin, give, verging, Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging. Ear, but earn and wear and tear Do not rhyme with here but ere. Seven is right, but so is even, Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen, Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk, Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work. Pronunciation-think of Psyche! Is a paling stout and spikey? Won't it make you lose your wits, Writing groats and saying grits? It's a dark abyss or tunnel: Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale, Islington and Isle of Wight, Housewife, verdict and indict. Finally, which rhymes with enough- Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough? Hiccough has the sound of cup. My advice is to give up!!! Adapted from: Gerald Nolst Trenite (1870-1946)

[Note: evidently the above was subsequently expanded considerably by the author, or the version given here is a simplification of the original.  At any rate, a longer version of this poem is provided by The Simplified Spelling Society at site linked from the title of this post.]

Speaking of which, the title of this post is, of course, taken from Lerner and Loewe's "My Fair Lady," adapted from Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, which in turn was based on a Greek legend. In the legend, sculptor Pygmalion creates a beautiful statue of an ideal woman, who is brought to life, as Galatea. The rest of the story is an account of their rocky relationship. Here is Henry Higgin's description of the vagaries of British pronunciation, based more on the wealth of British dialects than on the eccentricities of English spelling (Alan Jay Lerner, adapted from G. Bernard Shaw): [HIGGINS] Look at her: a prisoner of the gutter, Condemned by every syllable she utters, By right she should be taken out and hung, For the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue. [ELIZA very indignant] Ah-ah-aw-aw-oo-oo! [HIGGINS whipping out his book] "Ah-ah-aw-aw-oo-oo" ... Heavens! what a sound! This is what the British population, Calls an elementary education. [PICKERING] Come, sir; I think you picked a poor example. [HIGGINS] Did I...? Hear them down in Soho Square, Dropping "h"s everywhere, Speaking English anyway they like. You sir: did you go to school? [sitting down beside a bystander] [A BYSTANDER] What d'you tike me for, a fool? [HIGGINS] No one taught him "take" instead of "tike". Hear a Yorkshireman, or worse, Hear a Cornishman converse; I'd rather hear a choir singing flat. Chickens, cackling in a barn; Just like this one [He points to Eliza]. [ELIZA laughingly] Garn! [HIGGINS noting in his book] "Garn"— I ask you, sir: what sort of word is that? It's "ow" and "garn" that keep her in her place, Not her wretched clothes and dirty face. Why can't the English teach their children how to speak? This verbal class distinction, by now, should be antique. If you spoke as she does, sir, instead of the way you do, Why you might be selling flowers too. [PICKERING not sure what to make of this] I beg your pardon! [HIGGINS] An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him. The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him. One common language I'm afraid we'll never get. Oh why can't the English learn to— Set a good example to people, who's English, is painful to your ears? The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears! There even are places where English completely disappears, Well America they haven't used it for years. Why can't the English teach their children how to speak? Norwegians learn Norwegian; the Greeks are taught their Greek; In France every Frenchman knows his language from "A" to "Zed." The French don't care what they do, actually, as long as they pronounce it properly. Arabians learn Arabian with the speed of summer lightning. The Hebrews learn it backwards which is absolutely frightening. Use proper English, you're regarded as a freak. Oh why can't the English— Why can't the English learn to speak? Shaw/Lerner/Loewe

Books For Free: The Gutenberg Project

. OK: Yet Another Postponement Alert (YAPA). For Folk Music of the Sixties - please stay tuned. But first, this. Perhaps some of my readers will sympathize with me. I look with great dismay at the disappearance of many of the things that I enjoyed the most from popular culture. I'm not talking about Popular Culture; just popular culture; the collection of ideas that form a potential base for any sort of a discussion with say, someone you meet on a bus: TV shows, movies, books, radio shows, personalities, events.  It makes me sigh; nobody knows the delights I've seen ... it's but a step to Swing Low, you know what I mean? Take me, Lord; or perhaps: Beam Me Up, Scotty. I am definitely not wallowing in nostalgia, at least not in the first place. I think of nostalgia as being the longing for bygone times. What we have here is the loss of a common culture. (Of course, the fact that I don't have TV makes it worse; otherwise I would have at least the 2009 equivalent of "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz!" with which I could make a stranger smile.) Oh sure; you have "knock-knock" jokes now, but how will you feel ten years hence, when nobody knows what they are? Think about it. Sometimes even terrible things need to be preserved. One major problem is that, of course, people rarely have the time or the energy to actually read paper books, and certainly not the books that the Baby Boomer Generation (the generation born immediately after World War 2, mostly blamed on the fecundity of returning GIs) cherished, and collected in their homes. It seems trite to call these books "classics"; the word has absolutely no meaning any more, simply because it is used for so many different things, from music, to literature, to cars, and to Rock and Roll. The attempt to create a Canon of Western Literature met the need to Publish or Perish in a huge clash called Post-Modernism, which left very little in its wake except systematic destruction of classifications of everything. So we're simply talking about books --whichever of them that happen to be now in the public domain, I must add-- that were held in high regard by SOME sector of the population in the past, and has been selected by SOME individual or committee as being worthy of preservation. [I will try and put the selection process here if I discover it.] To preserve copies of the actual books themselves would be moderately useful, of course. But one would have to travel to various locations for the only copy of a book that's available. The books are perishing, for the usual reasons that books do perish: the paper deteriorates because of its acid content, the air affects it, the bindings fall apart. Also, more recent publications, considered more useful to younger generations, need the space. The first idea was to scan the books. After the books have been selected to be scanned, the scanned pages are placed in various archives in image form, e.g. "jpg" or "png". The Second stage is to run the scanned images through an OCR scanner, where OCR stands for "optical character recognition", which is a kind of program that splits images into lines, and each line into individual characters. These programs have been available for decades, and have become very intelligent, and can cope with very poor image-text indeed. The Third, Fourth and Fifth stages have to do with visually checking the mechanical OCR output, which is a page of text in a file, processing the text to make sure italics, bold and other formatting, images, footnotes, etc are all handled appropriately, and a final PDF file or HTML file created. These files are finally indexed and cataloged, and made available to the public for absolutely free on the WWW. Anyone who is interested in this entire process, and in browsing through the available titles should visit Project Gutenberg, which serves as a home-page for the entire broader books-to-e-text movement. On a recent visit to this page, I found myself interested in the process of how these books were created. One of the most creative ideas to come along is to DISTRIBUTE the PROOF-READING of the scanned book pages to thousands of internet volunteers around the globe. It seemed reasonable to believe that my labor was worth more than my contribution of a few dollars to the project, and so I followed the links, and soon found myself volunteering to be a proof-reader. I am now in my fourth day, still on trial, and struggling to get qualified as an authorized proof-reader. At present all I'm allowed to do is to check the OCR output, and nothing else. It takes three weeks of experience to move ahead to higher levels of participation. In these troubled and cynical times, one needs something to counter the despair that occasionally sets in, and every bit of positive information is infinitely precious. I urge all visitors to this page to sign up to proof-read Project Gutenberg books at the Distributed Proofreading page. If you're unsure of whether you have the skills or the energy to volunteer --they only ask for a few pages at a time-- you can try it out on this page. (Your first few attempts will be checked by a qualified proof-reader anyway.) At the very least, download a book or two, and enjoy reading them! P.S. Johannes Gutenberg was, of course, the first to invent the printing press, with which he printed a Bible; see picture at top. He is showing a favorite page from his Bible, which he printed in German. Gutenberg's invention is considered a crux of Western Civilization, and for good reason. By the way: an archival copy of every piece of writing that is copyrighted must be deposited with the Copyright Office, and ultimately in the Library of Congress. This procedure is, I understand, being reviewed. Archimedes

Race, America, and the Future

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I'm postponing a post on Folk style music to talk about a different issue that has come up.

An article in the Chronical of Higher Education is claiming that the emergence of biracial or multi-racial personalities in the public eye does not serve to battle racism in the US.

Oh gosh.

I recently wrote about the tendency to generalize, which causes both confusion --when done carelessly-- and improved understanding, when undertaken appropriately.  Racism is part of a collection of thinking patterns that allow people of modest intellectual means to cope with an evolving society.

Any sort of prejudice --including racial prejudice-- is a thinking tool.  It is a collection of stored thought-patterns that spring into play when one does not have the time or the inclination to deal with a particular situation from scratch.

For instance, a person waiting for a bus sees someone approaching, with a determined look in his or her eye.  Two reactions are possible.

Reaction 1.  Oh look; here's somebody coming to talk.  I wonder whether I should make eye contact, and possibly miss the bus from being distracted, or should I engage the person long enough to be of help?

Reaction 2.  Oh look; here's somebody coming to talk.  Hmm.  From the clothes they're wearing, it looks like someone foreign, and they're probably going to talk funny.  And smell of garlic.  They're probably going to ask for money, or a bus token ...

Though, in the best of all possible worlds, we ought to weigh the demands of civility and hospitability against the possible risk of missing the bus, depending on how crucial it is to catch the bus, we could choose Reaction 2, because it is the more efficient course of action.

Consider a different example, this one involving bigger risks.  You're in a city park, and an animal is approaching.  It is hairy, and big.

Reaction 1.  It looks big and hairy, and most big hairy things that I know are dangerous.  But it seems to have a smile on its face, and it's tail is wagging.  It looks like a wolf, but looks friendly ... maybe I should just smile back, and call 911 on the phone, or I could just run like hell ...

Reaction 2.  Oh god, it's a wild animal, and it's got teeth.  I'm not going to make eye contact, I'm just going to walk away slowly, until I'm out of its sight.

In this case, we would readily admit that the prejudiced Reaction 2 could save your life.  So at least some of the time, prejudiced behavior could be useful.  But beware.

Racism can be simply prejudiced behavior.  I've heard the following sorts of prejudices: * The kid who won the competition is probably foreign; foreign parents are always pushing their kids.  * The people next door are unemployed.  They're probably drug addicts.  * The fourth grade teacher is gay.  He probably fondles the boys.

Despite the statistical success of people who base most of their actions on prejudice, many of us realize that the social changes that have been for the better have been accomplished by people systematically choosing to ignore prejudices, and think each action through.  Thinking through choices carefully is more work, but in return, one gets a better social and cultural environment.

There is another kind of racism, which comes from having to share resources.  There's just  so much available; why should they get such a large proportion of it?  This is true of migrant labor in the US, and land use in Israel and the Palestinian Territories, in Native American Reservations, the institution of gambling in states which traditionally did not allow it, and even in the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

There is nothing appealing in this attitude, except that the culprits often hide behind the claim that they're doing it for their families and generations yet unborn.

Finally, of course, there is a worse kind of racism yet --or some kind of ism, anyway-- namely the belief that certain kinds of people are less than human, need less, should be allowed less, and should be watched carefully, and not be allowed to have too numerous offspring.

The number of people who engage in all these sorts of lazy thinking are on the rise, but their proportion is dwindling, compared to the size of the overall population.  I may have done more harm than good in outing this sort of behavior as simply mental laziness, but it serves to put the problem of race in perspective.

Futurists of fifty years ago predicted that the first white nation to have a black elected head of state would probably be the USA.  They predicted that by the end of this century, there would be few individuals of greater than 70% or less than 30% African descent living in the USA; in other words, that the caucasian and the african sectors of the population would mix.

This, of course, is bad news to those whose occupations depend on race.  Their livelihood is unlikely to be threatened in the short run: certain sociologists, certain political scientists, leaders of minority groups, professional chauvinists.  But, in the long run, it doesn't matter whether a particular election brings multi-racial individuals to the fore, or whether it doesn't.  This will all pass, and multi-racial people will be the majority, if they are not so now.  In good times, we will not need to invoke race in order to gain a mean advantage over our fellow human beings.  In bad times, we will recognize that people of all heritages can help us, and we must learn not to be too proud to take help where we can.

Of course, future generations, neither black nor white, but a sort of uniform grey, may miss the wonderful kaleidoscope of ethnic events and artifacts that we find all around us, the sheer color of racial diversity, using 'color' in the metaphorical sense.  But there are ways to preserve the cultural diversity of these times, without prejudicial baggage.  Perhaps we can learn to sing the folk music of all our nations (and sing it properly, without transforming it into gibberish, as the Scouts have done, no matter how well-meaningly).

Archimedes

Salvation is Created Chesnekov - Finlandia by Sibelius

. For the small devotional assembly on the day preceding Graduation at our college, the choir and band jointly performed a work by a Russian composer: Salvation is created. [From a philosophical point of view salvation alone is bad enough, but to think of it being actually created gives me a toothache! But from a strictly musical point of view, Salvation is a perfectly good word with which to start out a chorus...] Meeting the band director (whose idea it apparently was, to perform the 2-minute-plus work, judging from the fact that he conducted it) at the grocery store later that evening, I told him how very much I enjoyed it. His eyes lighted up, and he revealed that it was quite uncommon to have the work performed as a choral/band piece; apparently it is quite popular in the two separate formats: band transcription or a capella choral. Going out on YouTube, I discovered numerous submissions of this piece, performed by various groups. Here is the most disciplined choral performance, even if a little quiet, by the (no longer in existence) Dale Warland Singers. The Russian text is as follows (I'm not attempting to translate it, because it is poetic, and probably loses in the translation): Spaséñiye, sodélal yesí Posredé ziemlí, Bózhe. Allilúiya. The piece is frustratingly simple; there is no development at all, it's effect is entirely at the sensual, and rhetorical level. It is a collect, such as the Anglicans have. The instrumental version (wind ensemble; I could not find an orchestral version. This seems somehow appropriate; an orchestral performance would probably trivialize it) I have is by an unknown band, probably kept anonymous for fear of reprisals by the record company.  Here is a version for combined choir and band. Note for music insiders: this piece is almost totally homophonic (with some melodic interest, as always, in the bass, and occasionally in the tenor, over a pedal-point). In such a piece, each note in the bass line has more importance for its role in a specific inversion of the chord than for its melodic function, at least compared to contrapunctal works. You can savor each chord separately; note the heavy use of first inversion, and a startling second inversion on the dominant chord, which subsequently hurries upward and downward to root position over slight harmonic shifts. This work somehow reminds me of the chorale in Finlandia, even though that chorale is somehow more scandinavian than this one, and this one is somehow more Russian than that one. (You would think that this is saying the obvious, but I only say that I don't know how or why this is so. I can't quite put my finger on the attributes of either piece that makes them have their distinctive national style.) Here is a performance by the Nino Rota Orchestra and chorus. This next is a wonderful performance by a Chinese choir, singing in Finnish! The song seems to inspire people of all nations. (Note again the use of the second inversion in an accented position.) Finally, an interesting Bach chorus: Komm, Susser Tod, "Come, sweet death," a strongly contrasting mood to both the preceding examples of slow choral pieces. (Actually, the Bach work might be only an organ piece, and not a chorale, even if the melody is a chorale melody.) This is a recording of a transcription for large orchestra by Leopold Stokowski, of (Disney's) Fantasia fame.

Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Folk Music, and Folk Art

.

I had imagined that a "Folk Tune" or a "Folk Tale" was simply a tune or story that has origins in antiquity --I was a little vague about that-- and whose author was unknown.  In other words, I imagined that anything sufficiently old whose author was Anonymous is a piece of folk material.

This, of course, does not hold up to Scholarly Scrutiny.  There is --no surprise-- a whole literary (and I mean that in the literary sense) field of scholarship of not only folk tales and fairy tales, but of literary criticism of the work of folk anthologists, such as the Brothers Grimm.

The categorization of a story as a folk tale or fairy tales depended, apparently, on its having come from an oral tradition. This seems reasonable, and is in line with the needs of precision in definition.  So on one extreme, we have a story from an oral tradition (possibly authenticated by a collector, such as the Brothers Grimm, whose certification has to be carefully checked by the scholarly community), and on the other, we have simply a story of unknown origin, which emerges at some point in time, at least prior to the Victorian era, let us say, at which time interest in folk tales rapidly expanded. Unfortunately, here we hit a problem.

How does an oral tradition begin?  Let's look at Nursery Rhymes, for a minute.  The view among most sharp adults is that at least some nursery rhymes were --in contrast to being simple little bits of rhyme to keep little kids amused-- actually social or political commentary.  In the case of such songs as "The Grand Old Duke of York" it is a little more obvious, even though, not being a student of history, the reference eludes me:

Oh, the grand old Duke of York,

He had six thousand men,

He marched them all to the top of hill

and marched them down again!

(The War of the Roses?)  The rhyme

Ring a Ring of roses,

a pocket full of posies

ashes, ashes,

we all fall down!

is understood, at least by some, as reference both to the great bubonic plague, or possibly the fire of London, which were about the same time.  (I remember reading somewhere that the ring of roses, as well as the ashes, was in fact a description of the symptoms of the plague, but I could be mistaken.)  The doings of the nobility were often the subjects of the rhymes, especially if there was an implied criticism.  How did the oral tradition come into being here?  Does it matter whether the rhymes were passed down by oral tradition, or circulated on Broadsheets (a kind of renaissance protest poster)?

An article yesterday in the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that a scholar, Ruth Bottigheimer (who teaches at Stony Brook), has a theory that at least one family of fairy tales, namely the "rags to riches stories", such as Cinderella, and Puss in Boots, were synthetic creations, concocted by the putative "collector".  Apparently the insiders of the study of folk tales and fairy tales were up in arms against this idea, because it overturns so many of the assumptions about the oral tradition of these stories.

The evidence is pretty strong, from where I'm sitting.  It has to do with the fact that in the parts of Italy where one version of these stories emerged ("Constantino Fortunato"), conditions were ripe for the public to look favorably on a rags-to-riches story, and so the collector, known by the pen name of Straparola, accommodated them.

This overturn of accepted wisdom is the stuff of scholarly excitement, and bringing a sociological angle into a literary study is hardly a revolutionary idea.  At any rate, sister Bottigheimer is enjoying considerable notoriety since 2005, when she first presented her ideas at a meeting of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research.

I encourage the reader to look up the article in question.  One gets a vivid picture of the study of folk and fairy tales, and the amusingly violent reaction of academics to a fairly unsurprising theory.  Taking the broad view, the folk aspect of the material becomes vague, when one thinks that the inspiration for it is either political or commercial, which is to say, sociological.  The patina of age which is associated with folk material is romantic, but perhaps it is time for us to consider that the oral tradition we assumed that it originated in is not too essential for our enjoyment of it.

An interesting parallel is that of mistaken authorship.  In the early part of the last century many musical compositions were misattributed to famous composers, and subsequently revealed to be the misattributions they were.  Many of them are wonderful pieces, but as soon as the mistake emerged, the way the pieces were taken out of the mainstream was startling.  It really brings out the Philistinism that masquerades as good taste in certain sectors of society.

[An interesting recent publication is the collection "Tales of Beadle the Bard" by J. K. Rowling.  Ostensibly, these stories are, in the Harry Potter Universe, attributed to Beadle the Bard, a sort of medieval wizard, who created stories for children, collected by the 'modern' wizard Dumbledore, translated by Hermione Granger.  They are, of course, simply written by Jane Rowling herself.  Ah!  But what are their real origins? Inquiring minds ought to be interested.]

Oh what a fuss they make about folk art!  The 20th century seethed with indignation over many things: folk song, folk music, early music and authentic instruments, and historically informed performance.  I must admit that I, myself, have been involved in despair over inauthentic performances of my favorite music.  But life is too short to keep butting one's head against such things; obviously one wants to hear things played the way one likes, but it seems preposterous, in retrospect, to insist that everyone should prefer them played the same way.  In earlier posts, I have given links to performances of the same piece in contrasting styles.  Often, both performances are perfectly acceptable, even if one or the other brings out additional nuances that one might truly miss if they were absent.

Tomorrow: Folk Music of the Sixties.

Arch

Generalization, a Glorious Human Weakness!

. Everybody likes to generalize.

Oops, I did it again! Well, most people do. Why is this? Because it is an evolutionary trait that enables most mammals --and who knows how other life forms think?-- to retain and understand a larger volume of organized information than non-mammalian species. Here's a rough idea why this is such a brilliant strategy:

Method 1: unorganized knowledge of a little kid

Woodpecker - bird, has wings, flies, eats bugs, is noisy

Robin - bird, has wings, eats worms, is noisy

Dog - mammal, quadruped, barks, wags tail, slobbers over people that it likes.

Cat - mammal, quadruped, meows, purrs when likes people

Chicken - has feathers, lays eggs, can be eaten if cooked, eats worms

alligator - likes to stay in water, lives in zoos

people - talk, laugh when amused, cry when sad, eat when hungry (or get grumpy), like dogs and cats, come in male and female types, females have high voices.

Method 2: organized knowledge, with aspects of generalization creeping in

Mammals - quadrupeds, like and are liked by people

- dogs: bark, wag tails, slobber

- cats: meow, purr

- alligator: probably growls or something, live in zoos, exception: not liked by people.

Birds - flying, noisy

- Woodpecker, eats bugs

- Robin, eats worms

Two-legged walking types - male and female types with different appearance and voices

- chickens: bird-like, can be eaten, lay eggs

- people: like mammals (except alligators, of course)

Other types

- snake: slithers, unknown type, bites people

As you can see, with this --very hypothetical, of course-- classification, there's a lot less information to remember for each individual type. Obviously the Alligator has been seriously misclassified, and the Chicken has been classified as a biped, rather than as a bird.

Back to the question: why generalize? Now, every type of animal in a classification has some things in common with the others. Is it not reasonable to imagine that each type of animal has more in common, until proven otherwise? As soon as this child hears about its mother's "eggs", this classification scheme would be confirmed. (Can people be eaten, if cooked? Oh dear.)

Generalization in Abstract Theories

Mathematics is all about generalization. For instance, one is familiar with the idea of the diameter of a circle. What about a sphere? Of course. What about a square? Well, let's see now. After all, the diameter of a circle is the furthest apart two points in the circle could be. So this same definition can be used for a square, too! Or a cube. (In fact, a cube of side L has a diameter of L times the square root of 3, which follows from Pythagoras's Theorem. The diagram at right is intended to depict a cube in glorious 3-d.  Suppose all the blue lines, purple lines and the green line all have length L. Now the diameter we want is the red line, which is the hypotenuse of the red-yellow-green triangle. The green side has length L. The yellow line is itself the hypotenuse of a blue-blue-yellow triangle, so its length squared is 2 times L squared.)

A prime number is an integer that can't be factored into smaller integers. Factoring is an elementary skill, and it's not hard to get little kids factoring a number like 30 into little prime factors. Once they get to algebra, a kid probably gets annoyed when the process of converting x*x + 7x into x(x+7) is also called the same name: factoring. Hey, wait; are there prime polynomials? Sure. If you can't factor it, it's a prime polynomial, such as x*x + 5.

Readers who know about complex numbers and irrational numbers probably see the opportunity here to re-classify the last example as a composite. So, of course, it's all relative, whether or not something is considered prime. Classification becomes a matter of semantics very soon.

Generalization, too, becomes a matter of semantics, and the stretching of the meaning of the term that we want to generalize has to pass the test of whether it is more useful or less useful once it is generalized. For instance, the expression "The only good chicken is a dead chicken" is useful only if you're thinking about eating it. Dead chickens, as we all know, lay only a limited number of eggs (if "lay" is the word we want, here), so if you want the eggs, you gotta keep the chicken alive.

The tendency to over-generalize is commonly taken to be a sign of the most extreme foolishness. But generalization, as with most abstract operations, has to be practiced before it is perfect. As I read in a book somewhere, a child who has seen numerous examples of flying birds will assume that all flying things are birds. An encounter with a bat, for instance, will dispel this misapprehension, and that's a part of growing.

Consider the opposite case. A child who does not generalize at all, who does not indulge in any kind of speculative generalization is, to my mind, a cause for concern. So, while a tendency to make reckless generalization has to be moderated, gently, if possible, the child who does not generalize at all ought to be gently encouraged to make generalizations, and test them out.

Archimedes