Folk music and technology
Hi folks,
Wikipedia's article on "folk music" contains this description:
Folk music may tend to have certain characteristics\3]) but it cannot clearly be differentiated in purely musical terms. One meaning often given is that of "old songs, with no known composers,"\7]) another is that of music that has been submitted to an evolutionary "process of oral transmission... the fashioning and re-fashioning of the music by the community that give it its folk character."\8])
Such definitions depend upon "(cultural) processes rather than abstract musical types...", upon "continuity and oral transmission...seen as characterizing one side of a cultural dichotomy, the other side of which is found not only in the lower layers of feudal, capitalist and some oriental societies but also in 'primitive' societies and in parts of 'popular cultures'".\9])One widely used definition is simply "Folk music is what the people sing."\10])
I'm curious to learn what philosophical work explores some of the unique features of traditional folk music: especially the lack of emphasis on authorship and ownership. And the ways the folk tradition enables both
- Tribute, attribution and respect to previous renditions, and
- continued borrowing and modification in contemporary renditions.
Full disclosure: I'm interested in how these themes might apply to the development of technology. Especially in relation to intellectual property.