folk music

Traditional music, especially from rural areas, which is passed on by listening and repeating, and is usually performed by amateurs. The term is used to distinguish it from the classical music of a country, and from urban popular or commercial music. Most folk music exists in the form of songs, or instrumental music to accompany folk dancing, and is usually melodic and rhythmic rather than harmonic in style.

Each country has its own styles of folk music, based on distinctive scales and modes, and often played on instruments associated with that culture alone, such as the Scottish bagpipes, the Russian balalaika, or the Australian didjeridu. A number of composers of classical music have used folk music in their own pieces to give them a particular national character, and in the late 19th century the use of folk tunes was a prominent feature of nationalism in music.

In the 20th century a number of people, such as the composers Zoltán Kodály and Béla Bartók (who recorded over 1,000 East European folk songs in the early 20th century) and the musicologists Cecil Sharp and Alan Lomax, transcribed (wrote down) and recorded folk music to preserve it for the future. Since World War II, a renewed interest, especially among young people, led to a ‘folk revival’. Traditional folk music was performed to a much wider audience, and songwriters such as Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan composed popular songs in a folk style.

Elements of folk music have also been combined with rock and pop music, and form an important part of world music.

Folk music in the USA The multiethnic background of the USA has conserved a wealth of material derived from musical traditions from around the world, and regional variations and mixtures of these form a rich heritage of styles. Apart from the numerous indigenous Amerindian musical cultures - almost none of which has successfully been assimilated into the imported folk and popular styles, and remains somewhat separate from the rest of the US musical tradition - folk music in North America has its roots mainly in European, African, and Latin American sources.

European influences The strongest folk influences from Europe were those from England and France, which led to the ‘hillbilly’ tradition in the 19th century, and eventually to present-day country music and Cajun music. Also important, however, was the influence of European classical music, especially hymn tunes, which formed the basis of shape note music and the spiritual, and hence had a formative influence on the blues and jazz.

African and Latin American influences The slaves taken to America brought their own musical cultures with them, which (apart from pale imitations by composers such as Stephen Foster) they developed very separately from their white contemporaries until well into the 20th century. A vocal form found in many African cultures is the field holler, and this became a common worksong pattern amongst black slaves in the USA. The call-and-response pattern of the field holler, in combination with the harmonic progressions and simple forms of the hymn tunes the slaves were made to learn, developed into the spiritual and later into gospel music, while the African vocal and rhythmic inflexions led to the typical mannerisms of blues and jazz. Much African music has come to North America via Latin America, where it has blended with Hispanic music; it later became assimilated into the folk culture of the Spanish-speaking population of the USA, and later into international popular music.

Folk revival in the USA Although there were collectors and scholars of North American folk music active in the first half of the 20th century, notably Cecil Sharp and John Jacob Niles (1892-1980), the revival of interest in folk music only really began in the USA in the 1950s. This renewed interest in folk music is largely due to the work of researcher Alan Lomax (1915- ) and the singer Woody Guthrie, who recorded many folk songs, especially those in the tradition of political protest, which had a particular relevance to the period of McCarthyism in which they were presented. A younger generation of singer-songwriters, including Arlo Guthrie (son of Woody), Pete Seeger (son of the ethnomusicologist Charles Seeger, and half-brother of Mike and Peggy) and Harry Belafonte, found this tradition of protest songs an ideal medium for their own compositions, which dealt with contemporary issues such as nuclear weapons and racial prejudice, and gained enormous popularity in the 1950s and 1960s. A precedent had been created: contemporary ‘folk music’ which was by a named composer and unashamedly popular and international. The antiestablishment mood of the 1960s helped to make the new folk music even more popular, and produced singer-songwriters such as Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, who blurred the distinctions between folk and pop and rock music.

Folk v. classical The term ‘folk music’ is generally used to describe music of an aural/oral tradition performed by amateurs, particularly in rural areas, to distinguish it from the classical, urban, or commercial music of a particular country or culture. This definition, however, makes it only relevant to cultures that have a classical, art music tradition (such as China, India, Europe, and North America); other countries tend not to recognize the distinction. The influence of Western music around the world, and in particular Western popular music, has thrown the traditional music of many countries into sharp contrast; this non-Western music has recently been categorized with genuine folk music as world music or roots music.

Origins All music is thought to have its beginnings in storytelling, worksongs, and ritual, and these are the basic forms still prevalent in folk music around the world. The ballad, often unaccompanied, is the most common genre of folk song, and probably evolved as a means of memorizing traditional stories to be passed on from generation to generation. The worksong was used to establish a regular rhythmic accompaniment to repetitive physical work, often in a call and response pattern. Instrumental folk music is usually restricted to accompaniment for folk dance, and has its roots in rituals - especially those associated with specific events in the rural calendar such as harvest, midwinter, and the beginning of spring.

The study of folk music In Europe at the end of the 19th century there was a resurgence of interest in folk music, partly because of a fear (since proved to be well-founded) that it might be lost to posterity in the face of increasing urbanization, and partly to establish ‘schools’ of composition with some form of national identity to distinguish them from the mainstream (that is, Austro-Germanic) classical music of the time. There was also a wider interest in the music of other cultures, which led to the establishment of the new discipline of ethnomusicology. As the 20th century progressed, organizations began to form for the preservation and study of folk music, and musicologists transcribed and later recorded performances of traditional folk music from all over the world. In 1931, the first international folk festival was held in Copenhagen, Denmark. Many such festivals are now held in almost every country in the world. Internationally, folk songs and music are studied and published by the International Folk Music Council, founded in 1947, and the Society for Ethnomusicology, founded in 1956.