What the heck is "Folk Music" anymore?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by seed_drill, Nov 8, 2018.

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  1. Roger Thornhill

    Roger Thornhill Senior Member

    Location:
    Ilford, Essex, UK
    Try this - I saw the duo in London a few months ago. They're from North Carolina...

    House and Land
     
  2. seed_drill

    seed_drill Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Tryon, NC, USA
    I'm a huge Brit Folk fan, but my OP was already so long that I didn't want to delve into the differences. The primary one that I noticed is that when the British folkies went electric they still tended to keep more traditional material in their repertoire. Well, not Donovan, but the three Ashley Hutchings' formed bands and Pentangle and Clannad and the like.
     
  3. zen

    zen Senior Member

  4. Vangro

    Vangro Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    True, though Clannad aren't British, I thought I'd better get that one in before anyone else does. ;)
     
    seed_drill likes this.
  5. seed_drill

    seed_drill Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Tryon, NC, USA
    The British Isles. Anyway, I tend to compartmentalize things into US+Canada, Australia+New Zealand and UK+Ireland.
     
  6. illinoisteve

    illinoisteve Forum Resident

    Then there's the "Americana" genre. I don't know what the heck it is.

    Most of the singer-songwriter folk artists I like to hear, play acoustic instruments, and also research and play some traditional folk songs, a lot older than they are. Traditional folk songs sometimes have authors, but often aren't known to have been created by a particular person. Sometimes they seem to have arisen out of a place or some kind of way of life. Some of the best singer-songwriters create songs that make you wonder if they wrote them or found them.

    However, I must say that I also am rather fond of musicians and groups with eclectic tastes and set lists, so that inevitably takes them into collision with fixed genera borders. Then there will be issues if a "folk" group breaks into a medley of TV theme songs, for example, or when a Dylan picks up an electric guitar, or when a Trad Scottish band adds a Moog Sythesizer, claiming it was actually invented by Ian McMoog down on the Moors, and starts naming their medleys of traditional jigs and reels after articles in the National Enquirer, to make them sound more interesting to first-time listeners. The Battlefield Band, as recorded on one of their live albums, announced to their audience, "We will now play a medley of 'Di Turns Charles into Royal Whimp' and 'Aliens Bring Miracle Healing Bananas to Earth'."
     
  7. Malinky

    Malinky Almost a Gentleman.

    Location:
    U.K.
    [​IMG]

    This, as mentioned above :laughup: has a really great little known track by Koerner, Ray and Glover, called `Lightning Track` (or Lightning Ball, I can`t remember).
     
  8. Malinky

    Malinky Almost a Gentleman.

    Location:
    U.K.
    I have posted this before, but it bears posting again as it makes the above point....and it TOTALLY freaks me out!

     
    Roger Thornhill likes this.
  9. Fender Relic

    Fender Relic Forum Resident

    Location:
    PennsylBama
    In my mind Folk ended after Dylan went electric and Peter,Paul,&Mary got near their end. It's fuzzy with some overlap but I'd say mid 60's with Folk/Rock to around 1970, singer-songwriter era emerging. Look at Simon & Garfunkel,by the time of Bookends and Bridge they were doing their own thing and blending genres and going way beyond their early Folkie stuff. Real Folk continued thru the 70's with labels like Rounder,Front Hall, and Flying Fish to name a few but then it broke down into Bluegrass,Old-Time,Cajun,etc..I don't consider John Gorka,Shawn Colvin,David Wilcox,etc. and that grouping of 80's singer-songwriters as Folk even though they might have been called that. John Fahey,Leo Kottke,Peter Lang,Robbie Basho, and that bunch started the acoustic finger style movement and while they may have been labeled Folk I just think of them as acoustic guitar players who were part Folk but improvised, arranged,composed and again, blended genres....Folk,Blues,Ragtime,Country,Celtic,Indian,Jazz,etc. into their own thing. Folk became a wide net after mid-60's-1970 or so with a lot of people being thrown into that net but not really Folk. Folk in Europe.... a whole other thing. I think it remained a bit purer especially with Celtic groups. They modernized for sure but kept the Folk tradition and spirit more closely. I'm thinking The Bothy Band,Altan,The Boys Of The Lough,etc. but what were they called ....Trad,Folk,Celtic?
     
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  10. action pact

    action pact Music Omnivore

    "Linin' Track"... and, yup, it's great!

    It also has an early version of "Born in Chicago" by the Butterfield Blues Band that totally shreds!
     
  11. Davey

    Davey NP: Rosali ~ Bite Down (2024)

    Location:
    SF Bay Area, USA
    Folk music has become a bit meaningless as a description, artists and albums often get tagged folk when there isn't an easy fit elsewhere, but some of that music labeled folk in modern times is among my favorites too, especially when they bring an unexpected mix of instruments and sounds, like the new record Muunduja from Estonian duo Maarja Nuut & Ruum ...



    Maarja Nuut & Ruum - Kuud kuulama

    From the bandcamp page ...
    “Muunduja” was recorded in July 2017 at Peeter Salmela’s studio in Kalamaja, Tallinn. The duo was joined there by producer Howie B, who inspired the artists to use more than their standard repertoire of instruments. Maarja Nuut sings, plays violin and different keyboards. Ruum plays different analogue and digital synthesizers; various field recordings and “found sounds” were employed where appropriate. All sources and instruments were subject to lengthy processing done in the main by Evar Anvelt.
     
  12. lazydawg58

    lazydawg58 Know enough to know how much I don't know

    Location:
    Lillington NC
    But that's not really a bad thing. In the 50s and 60s they had the interest to dive into a world that in may ways was foreign to them and create from it something that was musically good and very historically significant. A lot of music would have been lost had they not dived into those songbooks and field recordings. If they hadn't gone into the Southern mountains and found Doc Watson he would have lived in obscurity in Deep Gap, playing for fun and an occasional few dollars at a Saturday night dance. So I appreciate those pretentious college kids from New York.
     
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  13. Dr. Robert

    Dr. Robert Forum Reconstructor

    Location:
    Curitiba, Brazil
    Absolutely! Love them as well, made the comment more as a joke than anything
     
    lazydawg58 likes this.
  14. Folknik

    Folknik Forum Resident

    I like Oscar Brand's definition: "If it has that folk song sound, it's a folk song." (Of course opinions will vary as to what "that folk song sound" is.)
     
  15. Folknik

    Folknik Forum Resident

    Not everything has to have a label. The most ridiculous label I've heard is "Anti-folk." It's folk-based and primarily acoustic, but they call it "anti-folk" because it's "politically focused and all about stickin' it to the man." What do they think Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, early Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, and others were doing decades ago? Were they "anti-folk?" I think not. Even centuries ago there were folk songs of protest like the anti-war "Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye" and many others. Talk about stickin' it to the man! Do some of these young folkies who call themselves "anti-folk" have no sense of history?
    "Indie folk" is just redundant. In this day and age, you don't have to be folk to be indie, but you basically have to be indie to be folk.
     
    Roger Thornhill and unclefred like this.
  16. As people have said, terms like Folk and Americana are thrown around these days as catch-all terms for a wide variety of music. I first think of the early 1960s when hearing folk music being used as a distinct genre. It's easier to separate the pre-electric folk from everything that came afterwards. The popular success of Folk Rock changed everyone's conception of what to expect from a folk sound, which opened up the term far beyond the acoustic-driven music from the 50s and 60s.

    Today folk is little more than a marketing term to quickly describe certain acts and differentiate the music from Pop and Hard Rock.
     
  17. Carl Swanson

    Carl Swanson Senior Member

    Same thing it's been for almost fifty years: soft rock.
     
  18. JoeF.

    JoeF. Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Jersey, USA
    I prefer British Folk music myself.
    American folk music seems too mannered and earnest.
     
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  19. Ironclaw

    Ironclaw Forum Resident

    Location:
    Colorado
    Also, the shared catalog nowadays is mostly the following: all the single ladies, 99 problems, shake it off, and uptown funk. Culture is devolving somewhat.
     
  20. JoeF.

    JoeF. Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Jersey, USA
    I always thought it was weird how the folk music of the British Isles, transported to Virginia and Appalachia by settlers and pioneers. became associated with...cowboy hats.
     
    Last edited: Nov 10, 2018
  21. munjeet

    munjeet Forum Resident

    Location:
    Baltimore
    According to Dylan, “folk music is a bunch of fat people.”

    I don’t agree, but it’s a fantastic quote.
     
  22. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    True dat; there is such a library of things available 'round the world that don't really identify as "folk music", but gets called such, based on, well, it's "normal" music, sung by regular folks that don't lean pop, or rock, or electronic, or spacey, or Country, or Americana (sorry Australia, but you know what I'm talking about, I suppose)...they just don't fit anywhere else.

    It's got nothing to do with protesting or opining about The Human Condition, or riding rail cars, or striking for dignity, or yodeling, or missin' your pawpaw, or being blind, lemon, or waking up this morning. Most cases, it's just some guy walking up to a piano or strapping on a guitar in a college bookstore, and singing a song for no other reason than for the bookstore to sell some expensive coffee.

    If "singer-sonwriter" were an actual genre, that might make a closer approximation, but..."singer-songwriter" doesn't really mean anything more concise, or specific, or descriptive.

    "Dude books studio time, intending to come out with some music not targeted towards any specific style at all...but, doesn't intend to scare anybody from any of those other genres away; so, where do we pigeonhole it...?"

    "Um, I dunno...'folk', I guess...?"
     
    Last edited: Nov 11, 2018
    qwerty likes this.
  23. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    Throw in, "...dancing about architecture.", just for levity.
     
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