General exposhnot be apparent to those not acquainted with the subject. A complete
report of the proceedings of the conference is published in the Joztral
of the International Folk Music Coztncil, Vol. V.
The conference prefaced its deliberations with an endeavour to de-
fine folk music, not for the purpose of academic theorizing, but for
the purely practical purpose of determining what is, and what is not,
the subject matter with which it is concerned.
We recognize that folk music does not exist in a watertight compart-
ment divorced from other forms of music. There is, and possibly al-
ways has been, a certain interpenetration between folk music and what
for want of a better term we call ‘composed’ or ‘art’ music (the French
term, h mtlsique savante, is more appropriate). Nevertheless despite many
borderline cases that may be hard to classify, folk music does exist as
a specific genre, and in discussing the value of folk music in education,
it is essential that we should have a clear idea of the type of music that
we are recommending.
I do not propose to weary you with the many conceptions, and
misconceptions, of folk music that have been, and still are, held. But I
will mention two commonly held definitions, both of which received
some support at the conference. The first is: ‘Music that has acquired
collective acceptance and that is essentially popular.’ The second is :
‘Music that has been composed ky and not for the people.’ Both these
definitions have elements of truth, but either, taken by itself, is mis-
leading.
It is true that collective acceptance is a feature of folk music, but
that in itself it is not a sufficient qualification. A song that has been
composed for, say, stage or cinema does not automatically change its
character by becoming widely known, nor for that matter does a folk
song cease to be a folk song when it loses its popularity and is known
and sung only by the few.
Then the second definition, ‘Music that has been composed by the
people,’ is not satisfactory, for it leaves out of account music that may
have had its origins in art music (mztsipesavante), but has become folk
music by having been taken over by the people. For the purposes of
definition we believe that the original source of folk music is compa-
ratively unimportant. Folk music may be music that has sprung up
from the community, or it may be music that has been taken over by
the community from some extraneous source, or it may be a combi-
nation of the two.
What then, is the essential criterion of folk music? In the view of
the conference it is music that has been evolved within the framework