Dear friends

With reference to J.L.Speranca’s letter
Meant as a reply to J.Moulden’s observations
Regarding B.Booch’s query :

Chain debating is as much fun as chain singing!

Well, I’d like to join the discussion on “community
singing” by making a few observations. I’m from India,
working on a comparative study of British folk ballads
and Indian ballads for my doctoral thesis. The group
of Indian “ballads” I study, are rendered as work
songs by women working in rice fields. A lead singer
renders a line of the song first, then the rest of the
workers repeat the same line 3 times – and thus the
song goes on in the same style.

Mr Speranca’s point of view is that a true ballad is
rendered by a solo performer, and that communal songs
or work songs cannot be regarded as ballads. If this
is indeed true, I wonder where it leaves my own
research, because this concept shakes the very
foundation of my studies. It’s rather like discovering
suddenly that your husband of 8 years is actually
someone else in disguise—I’ve been working on these
ballads for the past 8 years! It’s made me question
whether I’m working on ballads or what.

Please remember that apart from a feature like solo
rendering, these songs have in them all those
qualities deemed necessary by ballad scholars like
Gummere, Hodgart, Sidgwick and co. The songs are very
similar in theme and content to Child ballads. And
nothing like the "Hole in the Bucket", which seems
more like a rhyme than a ballad.

(Sorry, Mr Moulden, but I cannot afford to do away
with categories and classifications since mine is a
textual study which emphasises the literary qualities
of ballads. Identifying the genre of the literary text
is important in my case.)

Here’s a simple question which requires a simple
answer:

Can communal work songs of anonymous authorship, which
embody all the classic features of a traditional
ballad, transmitted by oral tradition, by a folk
community be termed as “ballads”?

Please help me resolve my “identity” crisis!

Best wishes
Beena Thomas
Dept. of English, University of Kerala, India




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