Multiple Authenticities of Folk Songs

Authenticity is a multi-layered and highly elusive concept, which seems to change its significance when it is applied to an object, a statement or a situation. In folk songs, the matter is further complicated by the fact that, on the one hand, they can be referred to as objects collected on paper or sound-recordings, i.e. as artefacts, while on the other hand, they also come to life the moment they are being sung, i.e. in performance. In this chapter we discuss folk songs both as artefacts and in performance and evaluate how the concept of ‘authenticity’ changes according to these perspectives. We do so by introducing a concept of multiple authenticities, based on notions by Denis Dutton and Regina Bendix. In the second part, we demonstrate how these insights work in practice with a case study of a folk song complex called Where Are You Going To, Fair Maid? with Roud number 298. We conclude that ‘authenticity’ is a dialogic concept, which becomes ‘in-authentic,’ as soon as its parameters become static.