[Ads-l] Antedating of "Folk-Singer"

[Jonathan Lighter]

What I find interesting is that the first "folk singers" appear to have
been national poets or, in the case of the sagas, storytellers.

The "Great Man" theory as applied to national cultures.

What is "folk" has been a vexed question for a long time.

Music review by John Donahue in _The New Yorker_, June 8, 2015, p. 26:

"Olivia Chaney...is bringing the grand tradition of British folk music into
the twenty-first century...She often performs barefoot....When she takes
her place behind the harmonium ... and, with a steely gaze, starts singing,
it's as if a mystical spirit has entered the room. It's chilling when she
slowly intones 'Stand by the roadside/ facing the headlights/ wait for the
break of dawn,' on her adaptation of 'Blessed Instant,' by the Norwegian
jazz singer Sidsel Endresen...."

JL

On Sat, Jul 15, 2023 at 8:42 AM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:

> I believe the second article I ever published, many years ago, was titled
> "Antedatings of Folk- Compounds in OED and Its Supplement."  The etymology
> of these compounds is complicated: some of them were inspired by W. J.
> Thoms's coinage of "folk-lore" in 1846, others were formed on German models.
>
> folk-singer (OED 1898)
>
> 1870 _The Orchestra_ 2 Sept. 378 (ProQuest)  Dupont on the other hand was
> a Folk singer -- a poet of the people.
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


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