August 01, 2004

This can't be true. So, my fellow monkeys, put your folkie caps on... What is folk music?
posted by Jerry Garcia 20 years ago
  • It is an arbitrary label (like those assigned to other "genres") that made classification simple for the record stores. It means nothing. Another opinion: http://www.coe.ufl.edu/courses/edtech/Vault/Folk/DEFINITION.HTM A more high tech way of finding out what artists you might like, based on other artist you like: MusicPlasma. Now THAT is pretty cool.
  • OK.
  • Folk music is music which has a basis in folk tradition. Real folk music is music which continues to be a part of folklore. Other countries have this, the US doesn't. Please leave. I plan to do so as soon as I can.
  • Plenty of great American folk tradition right about 20 years ago by Wolof
  • Bollocks. Here.
  • Yeah, if you're going to leave the U.S., at least do so for a valid reason. And I'm sure you can find one.
  • Crap. If there's a panpipe involved. I think the entire Andean population has been systematically forced to drop everything, become tirelessly tiresome panpipe players and then infiltrate every single touristy bit of the entire world in order to tootle Beatles tunes and send their busking proceeds home to their Shining Path overlords. There is no other credible explanation.
  • There's also this.
  • I love folk, along with bluegrass and klezmer and any other type of early or traditional music. Real folk music is music which continues to be a part of folklore. Other countries have this, the US doesn't. AS, I'm aware of an active and vibrant folk music community in the USA. What do you mean?
  • I tend to think of folk music as the antipode of city music: a pure rural style. I guess that would bind it to the culture of farming and mining. Once it goes to the city it tends to get processed and refined into other things, kind of like the raw crops and ore. Society has changed a lot, though, so I'm not sure if folk music can continue to exist when most influences in rural Nebraska are now from MTV, the RIAA, and P2P.
  • Moneyjane, everyone knows there is but one Bolivian folkmusic ensemble in the world, which ceaselessly tours the world, and thus appears to be omnipresent.
  • Folk music is music which has a basis in folk tradition. Real folk music is music which continues to be a part of folklore. Other countries have this, the US doesn't. Please leave. I plan to do so as soon as I can. Not sure what you mean by "continues to be a part of folklore." If you mean stories told with songs passed down as tradition among illiterate/semi-literate people, well there is not much left - but the U.S, is hardly alone in that regard. "Folk music" under that definition would only be found in small isolated pockets in most every industrialised country. It would be more widespread, of course, in Third-World nations in Africa, Latin America, Asia . . . There are a lot of reasons someone may want to move somewhere else, but lack of primitive native cultural expressions sure would not be very high up there in my book! The Smithsonian, for one, contains quite an extensive amount of information on traditional and folk music in the U.S.
  • I would argue that we Americans have a vibrant and continuing folk music culture, and not just down on the farm either. Exhibit A Improvised rap-battles. To my mind this is a modern day urban manifestation of an ancient folk tradition: the poetic-insult contest. What do you guys think?
  • The US has a wonderful folk tradition. So does Canada (about which I know more) - both are based on/influenced by European folk, but now have their own unique sounds and themes. There are other non mainstream or high art musical forms in North America, of course - thousands of native genres. But we never really mean those when we say "folk" - they would be called Native. In North America, it usually means music created by early settlers based on European forms (mostly British, or French in Quebec) - or the modern decendents thereof, including 60's protest songs, which take the old form and bring in new meanings.
  • I forgot about those 60's protest songs... that would tend to deflate my rural vs. city concept a bit.
  • Damn Bolivians! Must they pursue us with their irritating and wretched instruments? Could they not simply stay home and watch the coca leaves grow? Maybe a weekend game of Twister with bored DEA agents and doddering Nazis? But no. Curse them and their little vicunas too.
  • 60's protest songs: faux folk. The Great Folk Scare.
  • How are they faux folk? They are just as much about people's hopes and fears as older folk. There have been overtly political songs in the past - I'm blanking on some, but I'm sure there have been. Maybe about Guy Fox, or Catholics or something.
  • Nice that there's "ass music" and "good fucking music" on that page, but no folk. Well-designed.
  • jb, check for Joe Hill and this re Wobblies to refresh your memory.
  • Thanks, beeswacky. I hadn't heard of these (my North American history is very bad), but this is fascinating - such a rich culture that seems to have disapeared for all but a few labour organisers.
  • J, by that definition Zauberflöte would be "folk." I called the protest songs faux folk because they were deliberately modeled after the vernacular "folk" tradition so as to give them the character of spontaneous utterances of the Volk. This design goes all the way back to Pete Seeger. (If I can remember a primary source I'll check back in and cite same. I'm very short Monkey time lately. Feel free to disregard it as a snark otherwise.)