Apart from instrumental music that forms a part of traditional music, especially dance music traditions, much traditional music is vocal music, since the instrument that makes such music is usually handy. As such, most traditional music has meaningful lyrics.
Narrative verse looms large in the traditional music of many cultures. This encompasses such forms as traditional epic poetry, much of which was meant originally for oral performance, sometimes accompanied by instruments. Many epic poems of various cultures were pieced together from shorter pieces of traditional narrative verse, which explains their episodic structure and often their in medias res plot developments. Other forms of traditional narrative verse relate the outcomes of battles and other tragedies or natural disasters. Sometimes, as in the triumphant Song of Deborah found in the Biblical Book of Judges, these songs celebrate victory. Laments for lost battles and wars, and the lives lost in them, are equally prominent in many traditions; these laments keep alive the cause for which the battle was fought. The narratives of traditional songs often also remember folk heroes such as John Henry to Robin Hood. Some traditional song narratives recall supernatural events or mysterious deaths.
Hymns and other forms of religious music are often of traditional and unknown origin. Western musical notation was originally created to preserve the lines of Gregorian chant, which before its invention was taught as an oral tradition in monastic communities. Traditional songs such as Green grow the rushes, O present religious lore in a mnemonic form. In the Western world, Christmas carols and other traditional songs preserve religious lore in song form.
Work songs frequently feature call and response structures, and are designed to enable the labourers who sing them to coordinate their efforts in accordance with the rhythms of the songs. They are frequently, but not invariably, composed. In the American armed forces, a lively tradition of jody calls ("Duckworth chants") are sung while soldiers are on the march. Professional sailors made use of a large body of sea shanties. Love poetry, often of a tragic or regretful nature, prominently figures in many folk traditions. Nursery rhymes and nonsense verse also are frequent subjects of traditional songs.
Music transmitted by word of mouth through a community will, in time, develop many variants, because this kind of transmission cannot produce word-for-word and note-for-note accuracy. Indeed, many traditional singers are quite creative and deliberately modify the material they learn.
For example the words of "I'm a Man You Don't Meet Every Day" (Roud 975) are known from a broadside in the Bodlean Library Bodley24. The date is almost certainly before 1900, and it seems to be Irish. In 1958 the song was recorded in Canada (My Name is Pat and I'm Proud of That). Jeannie Robertson made the next recorded version in 1961. She has changed it to make reference to "Jock Stewart", one of her relatives, and there are no Irish references. In 1976 Archie Fisher deliberately altered the song to remove the reference to a dog being shot. In 1985 The Pogues took if full circle by restoring all the Irish references.
Because variants proliferate naturally, it is nai"ve to believe that there is such a thing as the single "authentic" version of a ballad such as "Barbara Allen." Field researchers in traditional song (see below) have encountered countless versions of this ballad throughout the English-speaking world, and these versions often differ greatly from each other. None can reliably claim to be the original, and it is quite possible that whatever the "original" was, it ceased to be sung centuries ago. Any version can lay an equal claim to authenticity, so long as it is truly from a traditional singing community and not the work of an outside editor.
Cecil Sharp had an influential idea about the process of folk variation: he felt that the competing variants of a traditional song would undergo a process akin to biological natural selection: only those new variants that were the most appealing to ordinary singers would be picked up by others and transmitted onward in time. Thus, over time we would expect each traditional song to become esthetically ever more appealing — it would be collectively composed to perfection, as it were, by the community.
On the other hand, there is also evidence to support the view that transmission of traditional songs can be rather sloppy. Occasionally, collected traditional song versions include material or verses incorporated from different songs that makes little sense in its context. Sarah Cleveland (b 1905) is a respected traditional Irish-USA singer. Her version of "Let No Man steal Your Thyme" contains a mixture of another song - "Seeds of Love". (Sarah's version). Flowers occur in both songs, but the theme is quite different. Equally, many traditional songs are known only as fragments. In the extreme case only one or two lines may have been recorded.
While the loss of traditional music in the face of the rise of popular music is a worldwide phenomenon, it is not one occurring at a uniform rate throughout the world. While even many tribal cultures are losing traditional music and folk cultures, the process is most advanced "where industrialisation and commercialisation of culture are most advanced."[1] Yet in nations or regions where traditional music is a badge of cultural or national identity, the loss of traditional music can be slowed; this is held to be true, for instance in the case of Bangladesh, Hungary, India, Ireland, Turkey, Portugal, Brittany, and Galicia, Greece and Crete all of which retain their traditional music to some degree, in some such areas the decline of traditional music and loss of traditions has been reversed. This is most obvious where tourist agencies brand some regions with the word "Celtic". Guide books and posters from Ireland, Scotland, Cornwall, Brittany and Nova Scotia refer to live music performances. Local government often sponsors and promotes performances during tourist seasons, and revives lost traditions.
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