Hanns Eisler and the Impossibility of Folk Music under Capitalism

In 1935, in an interview with L’Humanité d’Alsace, the communist composer Hanns Eisler explained a distinction between what he called ‘genuine’ and ‘false’ folk music. The genuine folk song is one which arises from the people it concerns- the proletariat, in Eisler’s usual terms – and the false folk song is one which bears common musical characteristics (compositional style and lyrical substance) as well as cultural characteristics (being performed and enjoyed by the working class) but whose origins are in the bourgeoisie. The defining trait of genuine folk, then, is one of ownership. Folk music, and folk culture alongside it, is owned by nobody; for example, the thousands of ballads, songs, and stories dedicated to the exploits of Robin Hood are almost all of what would now be called “public domain”. At their own time though there was no such distinction – they were simply free ideas, the communal property of any who needed them. It is not difficult to see what about genuine folk so appealed to Eisler.

In his interview with L’Humanité Eisler says of the existence of modern folk songs- If by folk song we mean a song that is sung everywhere, then yes. But if we mean a song that has been made by the people, then on the whole, no. Folk songs arise under primitive economic conditions … Modern capitalism is unsuitable ground for the growth of folk songs. And on first blush this appears to be true – the modern musical scene runs on money above all else: new music being spread not by its writers, nor through the proselytization of its lovers, but by those with financial interests in its spreading. A total class divide between those who control music and those who consume it.

In this essay I wish to investigate Eisler’s claim of the impossibility of genuine folk music under capitalism with the following thesis: though in a classed society, where music for the working class is provided by the bourgeoisie, genuine folk may not appear, classless subcultures may appear within said classed society, which do have a capacity for the production of genuine folk- to illustrate this, I will draw on the examples of convict and swagmen culture in Australia, of the culture of internees in a WWII German forced-labour camp, and of modern internet culture.

Bush Poetry

Prior to Eisler’s comments, in Australia, a genre of genuine folk had sprouted. Bush poetry was the music of the Australian working class – of swagmen, shearers, and bushrangers. Note that these are not industrial or even urban settings – the factory worker, the accountant, and the clerk, who lived in close proximity with the upper classes, were already meeting with increasing privatization of music.

Bush poetry was also the music of convicts, who though not necessarily physically distant from society were discluded from privatized popular culture by their lack of money.

Through these circumstances the economic conditions outlined by Eisler were met, resulting in a distinctly folk style of music. Note should be here made of a few recurring themes in genuine folk: the simple form – bush ballads being almost universally in a strophic repeating AB (verse - refrain) format – and the borrowed tunes, bush ballads regularly being set to pre-existing melodies (see: Waltzing Matilda, Click Go the Shears), especially those folk melodies which would have been familiar to the Irish and British criminals and poorer farmers who made up the driving cultural group behind bush poetry.

The Peat Bog Soldiers

Next, an example of appropriate conditions forming for the creation of folk music in the very times in which Eisler spoke. The Peat Bog Soldiers was a worker’s song written by a collective of socialist and communist revolutionaries imprisoned within a Nazi labour camp near Papenburg, in Northern Germany. As members of a forced-labour camp, the revolutionaries had limited access to music produced for them by higher classes, and so were compelled to form their own- in this way, the conditions for the creation of genuine folk music were met.

There are important musical traits present in The Peat Bog Soldiers which we see are common to both itself and the previously analysed bush poetry. First, the song is strophic. This aids in the memorability of the tune. Next, it is made from borrowed materials – opening with a note-for-note quotation of a song of the Thirty Years’ War – this also aids the memorability. The general simplicity of the song – its standard harmony and repeating verse - refrain structure – further aids this attribute.

Omoide wa Okkusenman

The classless conditions under which folk music thrives are also reflected in another, more widespread environment – the internet. In 2007, on the Japanese forum 2ch, a group of forum-goers collaboratively set lyrics to Takashi Tateishi’s Dr Wily’s Castle Theme from the NES game Mega Man 2. The resulting song, Omoide wa Okkusenman!, bears many practical similarities to both bush poetry and The Peat Bog Soldiers. Though its basic form is more complex, with five distinct sections (as compared to the average bush poem’s two), the song does then repeat in a strophic manner. The most striking resemblance, though, is in the borrowed harmony and melody. This practice of borrowing music seems exceptionally common to genuine folk – it often being made with little formal compositional skill or little time, and often with the goal of instant familiarity – you could compare these requirements to the situations of Waltzing Matilda (set to the melody of T.E. Bulch’s The Craigielee March)and of the renaissance style of parody mass.

The Lyrical Content of Genuine Folk

Another similarity of these songs is striking – their lyrics. Genuine folk often details a lamentable situation caused by power structures outside their writers’ influences – in The Peat Bog Soldiers, it is the German forced-labour camp, in Omoide wa Okkusenman Japan’s infamous work culture, and in the bush poem Moreton Bay the abuse of convicts by Patrick Logan.

Peat Bog SoldiersOmoide wa OkkusenmanMoreton Bay
Far and wide as the eye can wander,
Heath and bog are everywhere.
Not a bird sings out to cheer us.
Oaks are standing gaunt and bare.
 But now I've forgotten all that
And I'm living each day
Like I'm being chased by something
 My back from flogging it was lacerated, and often painted with crimson gore,
And many a lad from downright starvation lies mouldering humbly beneath the clay,

The Peat Bog Soldiers also expresses, consequent to its subject matter and the ideology of its writers, some amount of revolutionary sentiment-

But for us there is no complaining, Winter will in time be past. One day we shall rise rejoicing. Homeland, dear, you're mine at last.
Similar sentiments might be gleaned from the treatments of the bushranger Jack Donahoo in Bold Jack Donahoo and of the death of Patrick Logan in Moreton Bay:
Bold Jack Donahoo Moreton Bay
As Donahoo made his escape, to the bush he went straight-way.
The people they were all afraid to travel night or day
For every week in the newspapers there was published some-thing new
Concerning this dauntless hero, the bold Jack Donahoo!
 ‘Til a native black who lay in ambush did give our tyrant his mortal stroke.
Fellow prisoners, be exhilarated, that all such monsters such a death may find!
And when from bondage we are liberated, our former sufferings shall fade from mind.

It is not difficult to see why the authors of genuine folk may be persuaded to include such content in their lyrics. Songs have always been a choice manner of spreading ideas – there is a sort of symbiotic relationship between melody and language, where each makes the other more striking and easier to remember.

The Case for Genuine Folk

What, then, does any of this matter- ‘That’s all well and good,’ you may say, ‘but how is genuine folk any more valuable than the commercially-minded equivalent?’. Eisler said to L’Humanité that false folk was ‘ghastly kitsch’, but that does seem an awfully personal issue. A more compelling case might be made as so:

The first boon of genuine folk is in its lack of ownership. For the swagman, the forced-labour camp internee, and those in extreme poverty alike, without genuine folk there is little opportunity for music listening – it spreads without advertising, without a subscription, without the purchase of a CD or vinyl – if all the money in the world were to disappear tomorrow, it would be the only music to remain.

The other side of side is that it opens the doors of music-making to all – it operates outside of the legal system in which the flagrantly plagiarized such as Omoide wa Okkusenman would usually be impossible – through this style, the time-strapped workers and poor wanderers need no costly formal education to create and spread music that tells of their troubles and calls for change, through its honourable thieves and celebrations of dead oppressors.

Like its own Robin Hood, genuine folk gives to the disadvantaged and downtrodden at the expense of those who would keep to themselves, like gold locked in coffers, music locked behind copyright and royalties. And, though its circumstances seem set against it, I believe it to be very much alive. 

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