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TRADITIONAL DANCE
For the first News-letter of
the Welsh Folk Dance Society I have been as Chairman to write
briefly on what is generally meant by the terms "folk music"
and " folk dance."
But before doing so, 1 should
like to congratulate everyone concerned on the present strength and
vitality of the Welsh Folk Dance Society. We have only been working
to-gether four years, but the change that has taken place in Wales
during that time in the general attitude towards folk dance is almost incredible.
The first point that should be
made clear with regard to "folk music," which is often
understood to include "folk dance," is that it is never,
among highly civilized peoples, the consciously composed music
or dance of any one person. It is true that certain pieces of music
or certain dances may have been composed by some unknown person or
other saturated in a national tradition; but true folk music has long
lost its individual source, and in its submission to the process of
subconscious national transmission, has been moulded completely to
subject the form to national acceptance. Folk music is also in its pure
form not "arranged " with strange
accompaniments or for novel combinations; but truly sympathetic folk
song "arrangements" and folk dance stagings are usually
accepted by most -,is legitimate present-clay developments.
It has been pointed out by a
number of folk authorities that to all regional groups or nations
there belongs " a basic human strata "; and, whether one be
cultured or uncouth, rich or poor, the national folk expression is
the natural expression of that group-character. It is therefore
agreed by most authorities that true folk music "is the product
of evolution and is dependent on the circumstances of continuity,
variation and selection." - (Journal of the International
Folk Musicc Cotincil, Vol. V, p.12). This, by the way, was the
only definition that could be agreed upon after much discussion, it
the fifth Annual Conference of the International Council, July, 1952.
The second point that should be
made clear is that so-called "popular" music or dance is
not of necessity folk music or folk dance at all. Quite an amount of
present-day "popular" music, owing to the influence of the
gramophone, the radio and television, has never been born of the
people. and is only an imposition of a few foistered on the many by
artificial means. Such music and dance is often dead almost before it
is heard. Age must also not be considered an infallible criterion of
authenticity. Something may have come down to us in some form or
another that was never the living expression of a people as a whole.
But if a song or dance his lived freely among a regional group
or nation for some generations then that surely is the
"folk music" and "folk dance" of that group or nation.
We should carefully study our
own "folk music" and "folk dance" as they are the
fundamental expressions of our national joys and sorrows, and they
alone can maintain our national character. Let us see that in keeping
them alive as a natural expression of the people we give them free
life and never force them into strange channels to satisfy our
personal pride. W. S. GWYNN WILLIAMS
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