Folk process
In the study of folklore, the folk process is the way folk material, especially stories, music, and other art, is transformed and re-adapted in the process of its transmission from person to person and from generation to generation. The folk process defines a community—the "folk community"—in and through which folklore is transmitted. While there is a place for professional and trained performers in a folk community, it is the act of refinement and creative change by community members within the folk tradition that defines the folk process.[1]
Mass culture and the folk process[edit]
Through the folk process, the subjects of folk song and narrative are adapted to better suit the times; lyrics can be added, or removed; parts that are no longer understood can be re-interpreted or discarded. The result is a new bit of folklore that the next generation will continue to preserve in its new form. The folk process started to become problematic, first, when it began to operate on the copyrighted and commercial products of mass culture, and the appropriation and commercialization by mass culture of folk narrative and music which, being distributed by the mass media, become the newly canonical versions of the tradition.
One famous example of the conflict between the desire of artists to assert copyright and the folk tradition is the case of the ballad "Scarborough Fair". "Scarborough Fair" is a traditional British folk song with many variations, which was reworked by Simon and Garfunkel for their 1966 album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme; however, unlike the artists of previous generations, Simon and Garfunkel asserted sole authorship of the song.
The Internet and digital media, enabling consumers of culture to copy, alter, and select bits of both folk and mass culture, has tended to accelerate the folk process.[2][10]
The transformation of mass culture by the folk process goes back to the origins of mass culture; many old and traditional poems and ballads are preserved among the printed broadside ballads. Professionally composed music, such as the parlor ballad "Lorena" by H. D. L. Webster, were transmitted by performance and became subject to the folk process.[11] Folk and mass culture can cross-pollinate each other; a nineteenth-century broadside, "The Unfortunate Lad", became the American cowboy standard "Streets of Laredo", the jazz standard "St. James Infirmary Blues", and strongly influenced the Marty Robbins hit "El Paso".[12][13][14]