Hamish Henderson Gramci's observations of folklore

Gramsci's observations on folklore were of particular to interest to Hamish Henderson. Though they only constitute around importano d five c of the vast Quaderni del Carcere (Prison Notebooks), they can be Pages account for a large part of the foundations of Henderson's coe seen to of folk-culture, and to represent crucial assertions that were reified throughout his long investment in Scottish folksong revivalism, Henderson celebrated folksong as a 'process'. The transmiss ere to be nception of folk songs, and the inferred qualities of those songs that are able to survive, to adapt and to disseminate among people was, for Henderson, the basis of the political potential of folk-cultures 'underground' quality. In an early article, asserting the status of a given example of 'contaminated' song as a folk song, Henderson explains that it warrants the categorisation 'because the people have taken it, possessed themselves of it, gloried in it, recreated it, loved it. That is the only test worth a docken'. Gramsci sets out a definition of 'popular song' on similar terms: 

...those written neither by the people nor for the people, but which the people adopt because they conform to their way of thinking and feeling... since what distinguishes a popular song within the context of a nation and its culture is neither its artistic aspect nor its historical origin, but the way in which it conceives the world and life, in contrast with official society. of folklore.  The most distinctive quality of Gramsci's understanding might be called the 'traditional' conception: propposes for the term, an is the expansive definition that he su 'de of what consequently, the broad range of applications it gains outside.

One can say that until now folklore has been studied as a 'picturesque' element... Folklore should instead be tent a. s a 'conception of the world and life implicit to a official tober in the in determinate strata of society and in opposition... conceptions of the world that have succeeded one an historical process.