Traditional Folksong and “Folklore” Singers

It is said that folk song is dead. And if under folk song we understand what Gottfried Herder, the creator of this word, had in mind, then this may be applied at least to large parts of Europe. Herder called folk songs “the true, veritable, characteristic songs of a people,” and made a clear distinction between street ballads, art songs, and the popular products of the educated classes. Even if one sees in real folk song, as did Béla Bartók, only the songs of tradition, that is, those songs transmitted orally among the less educated classes (as especially among the peasantry in former times), and if one acknowledges only that product as being real folk song which adapts a new form when transmitted from generation to generation, then we can well assert that this true folk song no longer exists, at least with us. We should not however think of the peasantry as the sole class who cultivated folk song, as Bartók did. Folk song has flourished at all times, even within the compass of urban civilization. In former times, as today, it was created there and was then picked up and transmitted by the country folk.