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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 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send instant messages & get email alerts with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com/ %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%