Folk Music

Folk music, like classical music, can have a number of different meanings, but is most often used to describe an accoustic style of popular music which is based on traditional music.

Folk songs are commonly seen as songs that express something about a way of life of a people or "folk". It may exist now or have existed in the past or be about to disappear and in be in need of  preservation or revival. Yet despite the assembly of an enormous collection of songs over some two centuries, there is still no agreed upon definition of what defines folk music. 

Traditional music, also often now referred to as World Music or sometimes Roots music, was given this more specific tag to distinguish it from the Folk music tag that is more popularly thought to mean the folk music revival of the 1960s.

In American culture, folk music refers to the American folk music exemplified by such musicians as Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Pete Seeger, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, and Joan Baez.

In other countries all over the world, it refers to their own style of traditional song, from their country, using their traditional instruments, telling the stories of their folk. Many laments and threnodies, story songs and songs of exile are called folk songs even without a defining known traditional tune or instrument. Yet scottish jigs and raucaus drinking songs are also a large part of traditional folk, so sadness is not a definer.

Folk music tells us how our ancestors felt and to write it now, one need only be honest enough to tell it like it is.

Classical composers and folk

There was a vogue for folk music during the start of the Romantic period. One of the first to use it was Josef Haydn. Beethoven made arrangements of over 150 Irish, Welsh and Scottish folk songs . Liszt, Brahms, Bruch, Tchaikovsky and Dvorak wrote folk dances that are often indistinguishable from tunes that come from the authentic tradition.

Percy Grainger particularly enjoyed Morris dance tunes, and made many keyboard settings of them. Ralph Vaughan Williams made choral arrangements of English folk songs. Holst composed pseudo-folk dance tunes, as did Malcolm Arnold. Benjamin Britten made voice-and-piano arrangements of folk songs, although the chromatic harmonisation probably makes them hard for a folk enthusiast to enjoy.

Using early types of recording equipment Bartok and Grainger made field recordings of folk singers and musicians. Bartok also arranged Magyar dances for keyboard, though they tend to be remote from the originals.

American Folk Music

The rise of folk music as a popular genre began with performers whose own lives were rooted in the authentic folk tradition. For example, Woody Guthrie began by singing songs he remembered his mother singing to him as a child. Later, in the 1930s and 1940s, Guthrie collected folk music and also composed his own songs in a similar style, as did Pete Seeger, who was the son of a professional musicologist.

Through commercial recordings, this music became popular in the United States during the 1930s (Jimmie Rodgers), the 1940s (Burl Ives), but more significantly, in the 1950s, through singers like the Weavers (Seeger's group), Harry Belafonte, The Kingston Trio, and The Limeliters, who recorded and honored traditional songs and brought them to a new generation.

The itinerant folksinger lifestyle was exemplified by Ramblin' Jack Elliott, a disciple of Woody Guthrie who in turn influenced Bob Dylan. Sometimes these performers would locate scholarly work in libraries and revive the songs in their recordings, for example, Joan Baez's rendition of "Henry Martin", which adds a guitar accompaniment to a version collected and edited by Cecil Sharp. Publications like Sing Out! magazine helped spread both traditional and composed songs, as did folk revival oriented record labels.

Traditional folk music merged with rock and roll to form the hybrid generally known as folk rock which evolved through first performers such as The Byrds, Simon and Garfunkel and The Mamas and the Papas.

Many artists started to modify folk music and their work often incorporates electric guitars, drum kit, or forms of rhythmic syncopation that are characteristic of popular music but were absent in the folk originals.

One example of this is contemporary country music, which descends from a rural American folk tradition. Rap music evolved from an African-American inner-city folk tradition, but is likewise very different nowadays from its folk original. A third example is contemporary bluegrass, which is a professionalised development of American old time music, intermixed with blues and jazz.

Another trend is "anti-folk", begun in New York City in the 1980s by Lach in response to the "confined" American folk music revival. It now has a home at the Antihootenany in the East Village, where artists like Beck, Regina Spektor, the Moldy Peaches and Nellie McKay got their starts, and artists continue to push the envelope of "folk."

The Contemporary Christian Music scene has also been emerging with its own form of folk singers, including David M. Bailey, the Smalltown Poets and others.

History of Folk Music

• Folk Music 1960
• European Folk Music
• Folk Music 1980 to 2000
• Celtic Folk Music
• Humour and Folk Music