Folk music, in the original sense of the term, is music by and of the common people. Music is an art, entertainment, or other human activity which involves organized and audible sound, though definitions vary. ...

Overview

Folk music arose, and best survives, in societies not yet affected by mass communication and the commercialization of culture. It normally was shared by the entire community (and its performance not strictly limited to a special class of expert performers), and was transmitted by word of mouth.

During the 20th and 21st century, the term folk music took on a second meaning: it describes a particular kind of popular music which is culturally descended from or otherwise influenced by traditional folk music. Like other popular music, this kind of folk music is most often performed by experts and is transmitted in organized performances and commercially distributed recordings. However, popular music has filled some of the roles and purposes of the folk music it has replaced. Popular music is music belonging to any of a number of musical styles that are accessible to the general public and mostly distributed commercially. ...

Folk music is somewhat synonymous with traditional music. Both terms are used semi-interchangeably amongst the general population; however, some musical communities that actively play living folkloric musics (see Irish traditional music for a specific example), have adopted the term traditional music as a means of distinguishing their music from the popular music called "folk music," especially the post-1960s "singer-songwriter" genre. See also: World music. Ireland is an island in the North Atlantic politically divided between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. ... The term singer-songwriter refers to performers who both write and sing their own material. ... This article is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...

Defining folk song

Armenian folk musicians

"Folk song is usually seen as the authentic expression of a way of life now, past or about to disappear (or in some cases, to be preserved or somehow revived). Unfortunately, despite the assembly of an enormous body of work over some two centuries, there is still no unanimity on what folk music (or folklore, or the folk) 'is'" (Middleton 1990, p.127). Armenian folk musicians. ... Armenian folk musicians. ...

Gene Shay, co-founder and host of the Philadelphia Folk Festival, defined folk music in an April 2003 interview by saying: "In the strictest sense, it's music that is rarely written for profit. It's music that has endured and been passed down by oral tradition. [...] And folk music is participatory—you don't have to be a great musician to be a folk singer. [...] And finally, it brings a sense of community. It's the people's music." Gene Shay is a representative of Philadelphias folk music scene. ... The Philadelphia Folk Festival is a three-day festival of folk music held annually in Schwenksville, Pennsylvania in the vicinity of Philadelphia by the non-profit Philadelphia Folksong Society since 1957. ... Profit is a positive return made on an investment by an individual or by business operations. ... it comes from tribal times and it was passed down by mouth ...

The English term folk, which gained usage in the 18th century (during the Romantic period) to refer to peasants or non-literate peoples, is related to the German word Volk (meaning people or nation). The term is used to emphasize that folk music emerges spontaneously from communities of ordinary people. "As the complexity of social stratification and interaction became clearer and increased, various conditioning criteria, such as 'continuity', 'tradition', 'oral transmission', 'anonymity' and uncommercial origins, became more important than simple social categories themselves." (17th century - 18th century - 19th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to the century that lasted from 1701 through 1800. ... One of the most influential doctrines in history is that all humans are divided into groups called nations. ...

Charles Seeger (1980) describes three contemporary defining criteria of folk music (Middleton 1990, p.127-8):

1. A "schema comprising four musical types: 'primitive' or 'tribal'; 'elite' or 'art'; 'folk'; and 'popular'. Usually...folk music is associated with a lower class in societies which are culturally and socially stratified, that is, which have developed an elite, and possibly also a popular, musical culture." Cecil Sharp (1972), A.L. Lloyd ().
2. "Cultural processes rather than abstract musical types...continuity and oral transmission...seen as characterizing one side of a cultural dichotomy, the other side of which is found not only in the lower layers of feudal, capitalist and some oriental societies but also in 'primitive' societies and in parts of 'popular cultures'." Redfield (1947) and Dundes (1965).
3. Less prominent, "a rejection of rigid boundaries, preferring a conception, simply of varying practice within one field, that of 'music'."

David Harker (1985) argues that "folk music" is, in Peter van der Merwe's words, "a meaningless term invented by 'bourgeois' commentators". Jazz musician Louis Armstrong and blues musician Big Bill Broonzy have both been attributed the remark "All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song." Peter van der Merwe is a South African musicologist, author, and librarian at the Natal Society Library. ... Louis Daniel Armstrong (usually pronounced Louee in the French pronunciation with a silent s) (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971) (also known by the nicknames Satchmo and Pops) was an American jazz musician. ... Big Bill Broonzy (1893 or 1898-1958) was a prolific United States composer, recorder and performer of blues songs. ...

Subjects of folk music

Apart from instrumental music that forms a part of folk music, especially dance music traditions, much folk music is vocal music, since the instrument that makes such music is usually handy. As such, most folk music has lyrics, and is about something. Instrumental An instrumental is, in contrast to a song, a musical composition or piece without lyrics or any other sort of vocal music; all of the music is produced by musical instruments. ... Dance music is music composed, played, or both, specifically to accompany social dancing. ... Vocal music is music performed by one or more singers, with or without instrumental accompaniment, in which singing provides the main focus of the piece. ... Lyric can have a number of meanings. ...

Narrative verse looms large in the folk music of many cultures. This encompasses such forms as traditional epic poetry, much of which was meant originally for oral performance, sometimes accompanied by instruments. Many epic poems of various cultures were pieced together from shorter pieces of traditional narrative verse, which explains their episodic structure and often their in medias res plot developments. Other forms of traditional narrative verse relate the outcomes of battles and other tragedies or natural disasters. Sometimes, as in the triumphant Song of Deborah found in the Biblical Book of Judges, these songs celebrate victory. Laments for lost battles and wars, and the lives lost in them, are equally prominent in many folk traditions; these laments keep alive the cause for which the battle was fought. The narratives of folk songs often also remember folk heroes such as John Henry to Robin Hood. Some folk song narratives recall supernatural events or mysterious deaths. Narrative poetry is poetry that tells a story. ... The epic is a broadly defined genre of poetry, and one of the major forms of narrative literature. ... In Medias Res can mean a few things. ... The Battle of Waterloo by William Sadler. ... The Bible (Hebrew תנ״ך tanakh, Greek η Βίβλος [hē biblos] ) (sometimes The Holy Bible, The Book, Good Book, Word of God, The Word, or Scripture), from Greek (τα) βίβλια, (ta) biblia, (the) books, is the classical name for the Hebrew Bible of Judaism or the combination of the Old Testament and New Testament of Christianity... Book of Judges (Hebrew: ספר שופטים) is a book of the Bible originally written in Hebrew. ... A folk hero is a person that is idolized by the common person, but loathed by the rich and powerful, because generally the folk hero must take away something from those of the upper class to make life better for the peasants. ... The name John Henry has several different meanings. ... Robin Hood is the archetypal English folk hero; a courteous, pious and swashbuckling outlaw of the medieval era who, in modern versions of the legend, battles overbearing authority in various forms and most commonly steals from the rich and gives to the poor (usually to reverse the effects of harsh... The supernatural (Latin: super- exceeding + nature) refers to forces and phenomena which are beyond ordinary scientific understanding. ...

Hymns and other forms of religious music are often of traditional and unknown origin. Western musical notation was originally created to preserve the lines of Gregorian chant, which before its invention was taught as an oral tradition in monastic communities. Folk songs such as Green grow the rushes, O present religious lore in a mnemonic form. In the Western world, Christmas carols and other traditional songs preserve religious lore in song form. A hymn is a song specifically written as a song of praise, adoration or prayer, typically addressed to a god. ... Religious music (also sacred music) is music performed or composed for religious use or through religious influence. ... Music notation is a system of writing for music. ... Gregorian chant is also known as plainchant or plainsong and is a form of monophonic, unaccompanied singing, which was developed in the Catholic church, mainly during the period 800-1000. ... Monasticism (from Greek: monachos—a solitary person) is the religious practice of renouncing all worldly pursuits in order to fully devote ones life to spiritual work. ... Green Grow the Rushes, O, is a folk song popular in England, Scotland, and Wales. ... Singing carols: John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together A Christmas carol is a carol (song or hymn) whose lyrics are on the theme of Christmas, or the winter season in general. ...

Other sorts of folk songs are less exalted. Work songs are composed; they frequently feature call and response structures, and are designed to enable the labourers who sing them to coordinate their efforts in accordance with the rhythms of the songs. In the armed forces, a lively tradition of jody calls are sung while soldiers are on the march. Professional sailors made use of a large body of sea shanties. Love poetry, often of a tragic or regretful nature, prominently figures in many folk traditions. Nursery rhymes and nonsense verse also are frequent subjects of folk songs. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... In music, a call and response is a succession of two distinct phrases usually played by different musicians, where the second phrase is heard as a direct commentary on or response to the first. ... Armed forces are the military forces of a state. ... A drill sergeant drills recruits in the U.S. Army. ... Sea shanties (singular shanty, also spelled chantey; derived from the French word chanter, to sing) were shipboard working songs. ... A nursery rhyme is a traditional song or poem taught to young children, originally in the nursery. ... Nonsense verse is a form of poetry, normally composed for humorous effect, which is intentionally and overtly paradoxical, silly, witty, whimsical or just plain strange. ...

Variation in folk music

Music transmitted by word of mouth though a community will, in time, develop many variants, because this kind of transmission cannot produce word-for-word and note-for-note accuracy. Indeed, many traditional folk singers are quite creative and deliberately modify the material they learn.

Because variants proliferate naturally, it is naïve to believe that there is such a thing as the single "authentic" version of a ballad such as "Barbara Allen." Field researchers in folk song (see below) have encountered countless versions of this ballad throughout the English-speaking world, and these versions often differ greatly from each other. None can reliably claim to be the original, and it is quite possible that whatever the "original" was, it ceased to be sung centuries ago. Any version can lay an equal claim to authenticity, so long as it is truly from a traditional folksinging community and not the work of an outside editor. A ballad is a story in a song, usually a narrative song or poem. ... Barbara Allen is a folk song known in dozens of versions. ...

Cecil Sharp had an influential idea about the process of folk variation: he felt that the competing variants of a folk song would undergo a process akin to biological natural selection: only those new variants that were the most appealing to ordinary singers would be picked up by others and transmitted onward in time. Thus, over time we would expect each folksong to become esthetically ever more appealing — it would be collectively composed to perfection, as it were, by the community. Cecil James Sharp (1859-1924) was the founding father of the folklore revival in England in the early twentieth century, and many of Englands traditional dances and music owe their continuing existence to his work in recording and publishing them. ... Natural selection is the metaphor chosen by Charles Darwin in 1859 to describe what he proposed to be the major force driving the evolution of new species and of those organismic attributes that allow life forms to negotiate their normal environments better than others (see Evolution, Adaptation). ...

On the other hand, there is also evidence to support the view that transmission of folk songs can be rather sloppy. Occasionally, collected folk song versions include material or verses incorporated from different songs that makes little sense in its context. A perfect process of natural selection would not have permitted these incoherent versions to survive.

The decline of folk traditions in modern societies

Folk music seems to reflect a universal impulse of humanity. No fieldwork expedition by cultural anthropologists has yet discovered a preindustrial people that did not have its own folk music. It seems safe to infer that folk music was a property of all people starting from the dawn of the species. Cultural anthropology, also called social anthropology or socio-cultural anthropology, forms one of four commonly-recognized fields of anthropology, the holistic study of humanity. ...

However, the development of modern society--first literacy, then the conversion of culture into a salable commodity--created a new form of transmission of music that first influenced, then in some societies essentially eliminated the original folk tradition. The decline of folk music in a culture can be followed through three stages.

Stage I: Urban influence

One of the first folk traditions impacted by modern society was the folksong of rural England. Starting in Elizabethan times, urban poets wrote broadsheet ballads that (thanks to printing) could be sold widely. The ballads probably didn't need musical notation, since they would have been sung to tunes that everybody knew, the folk tradition being very much alive at the time. These ballads heavily influenced the folk tradition, but did not override it. In fact, the folk tradition showed great resilience. Through the process of folk transmission, the urban ballads were modified, keeping the more vivid content and ironing out the less "citified" material. The resulting body of folk lyrics is widely considered to be a very appealing blend. Thus, the printing press and widespread literacy did not suffice to destroy the English folk tradition, but in some ways enriched it. The Elizabethan Era is the period associated with the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558 - 1603) and is often considered to be a golden age in English history. ... A ballad is a story in a song, usually a narrative song or poem. ...

The English folk song legacy was probably affected by urban melodies as well as words. The clue here is that folk music in remote rural areas of the English-speaking world, such as Highland Scotland or the Appalachian mountains, abounds in tunes that employ the pentatonic scale, a scale widely used for folk music around the world. However, pentatonic music was rare among the rural English villagers who first volunteered their tunes to researchers in the late 19th century. A plausible explanation is that life in rural England was far more closely affected by the proximity to the urban centers. Music in the standard major and minor scales evidently penetrated to the nearby rural areas, where it was converted to folk idiom, but nevertheless succeeded in displacing the old pentatonic music. The Scottish Highlands are the mountainous regions of Scotland north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault. ... Royal motto: Nemo me impune lacessit (English: No one provokes me with impunity) Scotlands location within the United Kingdom Languages English, Gaelic, Scots Capital Edinburgh Largest city Glasgow First Minister Jack McConnell Area - Total - % water Ranked 2nd UK 78,782 km² 1. ... A rainy day in the Great Smoky Mountains, Western North Carolina The Appalachian Mountains (French: les Appalaches) are a vast system of North American mountains, partly in Canada, but mostly in the United States, extending as a zone, from 100 to 300 miles wide, running from Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada... In music, a pentatonic scale is a scale with five notes per octave. ...

Stage II: Replacement of folk music by popular music

The pattern of urban influence on folk music was intensified to outright destruction as soon as the capitalist economic system had developed to the point that music could be packaged and distributed for the purpose of earning a profit--in other words, when popular music was born. It was around Victorian times that ordinary people of the Western world were first offered music as a mass commodity, for example, in the phenomenon of Music Hall. Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Capitalism Capitalism has been defined in various ways. ... Popular music is music belonging to any of a number of musical styles that are accessible to the general public and mostly distributed commercially. ... Queen Victoria (shown here on the morning of her Accession to the Throne, 20 June 1837) gave her name to the historic era The Victorian era of Great Britain is considered the height of the British industrial revolution and the apex of the British Empire. ... Music Hall is a form of British theatrical entertainment which reached its peak of popularity between 1850 and 1960. ...

The introduction of popular music was simultaneous with the latter part of the Industrial Revolution. This was a time of great change in lifestyle for the great body of the people, notably the migration of the old agrarian communities to the new industrial ones. It is likely that the resulting social disruption helped cut people's emotional bonds to their old folk music, and thereby helped the shift in taste toward popular music. The Industrial Revolution (more correctly, the First Industrial Revolution) was one of the major technological, socioeconomic and cultural changes in the late 18th and early 19th century resulting from the replacement of an economy based on manual labour to one dominated by industry and machine manufacture. ...

As technology advanced, succeeding generations became enticed with popular music in ever more accessible and desirable forms. Gramophone records became LPs and then CDs; the Music Hall gave way to radio, followed by television. With the ever-increasing success of popular music, the musical life of many individuals eventually ceased to include any folk music at all. Moreover, since popular music for most people is passive music (that is, listened to, but not created or performed), the overwhelming success of popular music also entailed a sharp decline of music as an active, participatory activity. Edison cylinder phonograph from about 1899 The phonograph, or gramophone, was the most common device for playing recorded sound from the 1870s through the 1980s. ... A gramophone record, (also phonograph record - often simply record) is an analog sound recording medium: a flat disc rotating at a constant angular velocity, with inscribed spiral grooves in which a stylus or needle rides. ... Interference colors. ...

Stage III: Loss of musical ability in the community

The terminal state of the loss of folk music can be seen in the United States and a few similar societies, where except in isolated areas and among hobbyists, traditional folk music no longer survives. In the absence of folk music, many individuals do not sing. It is possible that non-singers feel intimidated by widespread exposure in recordings and broadcasting to the singing of skilled experts. Another possibility is that they simply cannot sing, because they did not sing when they were small children, when learning of skills takes place most naturally.

There is anecdotal evidence that the loss of singing ability is continuing rapidly at the present time. As recently as the 1960s, audiences at American sporting events collectively sang the American national anthem before a game; the anthem is now generally assigned to a recording or to a soloist. The factual accuracy of this article is disputed. ... Nicholson took the copy Key gave him to a printer, where it was published as a broadside on September 17 under the title The Defence of Fort McHenry, with an explanatory note explaining the circumstances of its writing. ...

Inability to sing is apparently unusual in a traditional society, where the habit of singing folk song since early childhood gives everyone the practice needed to able to sing at least reasonably well.

Regional variation

The loss of folk music is occurring at different rates in different regions of the world. Naturally, where industrialization and commercialization of culture are most advanced, so tends to be the loss of folk music. Yet in nations or regions where folk music is a badge of cultural or national identity, the loss of folk music can be slowed; this is held to be true, for instance in the case of Hungary, Ireland, Brittany, and Galicia, Greece and Crete all of which retain their traditional music to some degree. National motto: Kentoch mervel eget bezañ saotret (Breton: Rather dead than soiled) Official languages French Capitals Rennes and Nantes Largest city Nantes Area -Total 27 208 Km² km² Population -Total (2004) 4,198,500 Currency Euro (€) (EUR) Time zone UTC, Summer: UTC +2 National emblem Ermine Patron saints St. ... Galicia (Spain) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... Crete is an island that is a part of Greece. ...

Fieldwork and scholarship on folk music

Starting in the 19th century, interested people - academics and amateur scholars - started to take note of what was being lost, and there grew various efforts aimed at preserving the music of the people. One such effort was the collection by Francis James Child in the late 19th century of the texts of over three hundred ballads in the English and Scots traditions (called the Child Ballads). Contemporaneously came the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould, and later and more significantly Cecil Sharp who worked in the early 20th century to preserve a great body of English rural folk song, music and dance, under the aegis of what became and remains the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS). Sharp also worked in America, recording the folk songs of the Appalachian Mountains in 1916-1918 in collaboration with Maud Karpeles and Olive Dame Campbell. Francis James Child (February 1, 1825 - September 11, 1896), was an American scholar and educationist, and collector of what came to be known as the Child Ballads. ... Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ... A ballad is a story in a song, usually a narrative song or poem. ... The Child Ballads are a collection of 305 ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, collected by Francis James Child. ... The Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould (28 January 1834 – 2 January 1924) was an English Victorian hagiographer, antiquarian, novelist and eclectic scholar. ... Cecil James Sharp (1859-1924) was the founding father of the folklore revival in England in the early twentieth century, and many of Englands traditional dances and music owe their continuing existence to his work in recording and publishing them. ... (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999 in the... Olive Dame Campbell (1882 - 1954) was an American folklorist. ...

Around this time, composers of classical music developed a strong interest in folk song collecting, and a number of outstanding composers carried out their own field work on folk song. These included Percy Grainger and Ralph Vaughan Williams in England and Béla Bartók in Hungary. These composers, like many of their predecessors, incorporated folk material into their classical compositions. Classical music is a broad, somewhat imprecise term, referring to music produced in, or rooted in the traditions of, European art, ecclesiastical and concert music, encompassing a broad period from roughly 1000 to the present day. ... Percy Aldridge Grainger (8 July 1882 – 20 February 1961) was an Australian-born pianist, composer, and champion of the saxophone. ... Ralph Vaughan Williams, OM (October 12, 1872 – August 26, 1958) was an influential British composer. ... Béla Bartók in 1927 Béla Viktor János Bartók (March 25, 1881 – September 26, 1945) was a Hungarian composer, pianist and collector of Eastern European and Middle Eastern folk music. ...

In America, during the 1930s and 1940s, the Library of Congress worked through the offices of musicologist Alan Lomax and others to capture as much American field material as possible. // Events and trends A public speech by Benito Mussolini, founder of the Fascist movement The 1930s were described as an abrupt shift to more radical lifestyles, as countries were struggling to find a solution to the global depression. ... // Events and trends World War II was a truly global conflict with many facets: immense human suffering, fierce indoctrination, and the use of new, extremely devastating weapons such as the atomic bomb. ... Library of Congress, Jefferson building The Library of Congress is the unofficial national library of the United States. ... Lomax playing guitar, sometime between 1938 and 1950 Alan Lomax (January 31, 1915 – July 19, 2002) was an American folklorist and musicologist specializing in the music of the United States and that of other nations which influenced American music. ...

Often, fieldworkers in folk song hoped that their work would restore folk music to the people. For instance, Cecil Sharp campaigned, with some success, to have English folk songs (in his own heavily edited and expurgated versions) to be taught to schoolchildren.

One theme that runs through the great period of scholarly folk song collection is the tendency of certain members of the "folk", who were supposed to be the object of study, to become scholars and advocates themselves. For example, Jean Ritchie was the youngest child of a large family from Viper, Kentucky that had preserved many of the old Appalachian folk songs. Ritchie, living in a time when the Appalachians had opened up to outside influence, was university educated and ultimately moved to New York City, where she made a number of classic recordings of the family repertoire and published an important compilation of these songs. Jean Ritchie (born 1922) is an American folk singer. ...

Folk revivals

As folk traditions decline, there is often a conscious effort to resuscitate them. Such efforts are often exerted by bridge figures such as Jean Ritchie, described above. Folk revivals also involve collaboration between traditional folk musicians and other participants (often of urban background) who come to the tradition as adults.

The folk revival of the 1950's in Britain and America had something of this character. In 1950 Alan Lomax came to Britain, where at a Working Men's Club in the remote Northumberland mining village of Tow Law he met two other seminal figures: A.L.'Bert' Lloyd and Ewan MacColl, who were performing folk music to the locals there. Lloyd was a colourful figure who had travelled the world and worked at such varied occupations as sheep-shearer in Australia and shanty-man on a whaling ship. MacColl, born in Salford of Scottish parents, was a brilliant playwright and songwriter who had been strongly politicised by his earlier life. MacColl had also learned a large body of Scottish traditional songs from his mother. The meeting of MacColl and Lloyd with Lomax is credited with being the point at which the British roots revival began. The two colleagues went back to London where they formed the Ballads and Blues Club which eventually became renamed the Singers' Club and was the first, as well as the most enduring, of what became known as folk clubs. As the 1950s progressed into the 1960s, the folk revival movement built up in both Britain and America. 1950 (MCML) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... A. L. Bert Lloyd (1908-1982) was a British folksinger and collector of folk songs, and as such was a key figure in the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s. ... Ewan MacColl (25 January 1915 - 22 October 1989) was an English folk singer, songwriter, socialist, actor, poet, playwright, and record producer. ... Sea shanties (singular shanty, also spelled chantey; derived from the French word chanter, to sing) were shipboard working songs. ... A roots revival (folk revival) is a trend which includes young performers popularizing the traditional musical styles of their ancestors. ... Folk clubs were primarily an urban phenomenon of the 1960s and 1970s. ... // Events and No. ... The 1960s decade refers to the years from 1960 to 1969, inclusive. ...

Another example is the Hungarian model, the tanchaz movement. This model involves strong cooperation between musicology experts and enthusiastic amateurs, resulting in a strong vocational foundation and a very high professional level. They also had the advantage that rich, living traditions of Hungarian folk music and folk culture still survived in rural areas, especially in Transylvania. The involvement of experts meant an effort to understand and revive folk traditions in their full complexity. Music, dance, and costumes remained together as they once had been in the rural communities: rather than merely reviving folk music, the movement revived broader folk traditions. Started in the 1970s, tanchaz soon became a massive movement creating an alternative leisure activity for youths apart from discos and music clubs—or one could say that it created a new kind of music club. The tanchaz movement spread to ethnic Hungarian communities around the world. Today, almost every major city in the U.S. and Australia has its own Hungarian folk music and folk dance group; there are also groups in Japan, Hong Kong, Argentina and Western Europe. Táncház is an aspect of the Hungarian roots revival of traditional culture which began in the early 1970s, and remains an active part of the national culture across the country, especially in cities like Budapest. ... For other uses, see Transylvania (disambiguation). ... The 1970s decade refers to the years from 1970 to 1979, inclusive. ...

See also: blues, Harry Everett Smith. The blues is a vocal and instrumental form of music based on a pentatonic scale and a characteristic twelve-bar chord progression. ... Harry Everett Smith (1923–1991) was an American born in Portland, Oregon; he was an archivist, ethnomusicologist, student of anthropology, record collector, experimental filmmaker, artist, bohemian and Kabbalist. ...

The emergence of popular folk artists

During the twentieth century, a crucial change in the history of folk music began. Folk material came to be adopted by talented performers, performed by them in concerts, and disseminated by recordings and broadcasting. In other words, a new genre of popular music had arisen. This genre was linked by nostalgia and imitation to the original traditions of folk music as it was sung by ordinary people. However, as a popular genre it quickly evolved to be quite different from its original roots. Popular music is music belonging to any of a number of musical styles that are accessible to the general public and mostly distributed commercially. ...

Confusingly, popular (i.e., commercially-disseminated) music based on a folk tradition is called "folk music", no matter how different it may be from a folk music rooted in the community. As a result, some individuals in a modern society are unaware that folk music of the original variety ever existed. For instance, many Americans, including some musicians, appear to believe that "folk music" has always meant a genre of song dominated by simplistic guitar accompaniments and primarily oriented towards political protest, humourous schtick, and/or obssessive musing on bad relationships and other personal "issues."

The rise of folk music as a popular genre began with performers whose own lives were rooted in the authentic folk tradition. Thus, 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 both collected folk music and also composed his own songs, as did Pete Seeger, who was the son of a professional musicologist. Through dissemination on commercial recordings, this vein of music became popular in the United States during the 1950s, through singers like the Weavers (Seeger's group), Burl Ives, Harry Belafonte and the Kingston Trio, who tried to reproduce and honor the work that had been collected in preceding decades. The commercial popularity of such performers probably peaked in the U.S. with the ABC Hootenanny [1] television series in 1963, which was cancelled after the arrival of the Beatles, the "British invasion" and the rise of folk-rock. Woody Guthrie with Guitar Woodrow Wilson Guthrie (July 14, 1912–October 3, 1967), known as Woody Guthrie was an influential and prolific American folk musician noted for his identification with the common man, the poor and the downtrodden, and for his abhorrence of fascism and exploitation. ... // Events and trends A public speech by Benito Mussolini, founder of the Fascist movement The 1930s were described as an abrupt shift to more radical lifestyles, as countries were struggling to find a solution to the global depression. ... // Events and trends World War II was a truly global conflict with many facets: immense human suffering, fierce indoctrination, and the use of new, extremely devastating weapons such as the atomic bomb. ... Peter Seeger (born May 3, 1919 in New York City), almost universally known as Pete Seeger, is a folk singer and political activist. ... A musicologist is someone who studies musicology. ... // Events and No. ... The Weavers were an immensely popular and influential folk music quartet from Greenwich Village, New York, United States. ... Burl Ives, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1955 Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives (June 14, 1909 – April 14, 1995) was a successful folk music singer, author and actor. ... Belafonte (center) on the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C with Sidney Poitier and Charlton Heston Harold George Belafonte, Jr. ... The Kingston Trio is an American folk group, perhaps the single most prominent one. ...

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 in 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! [2] magazine helped spread both traditional and composed songs, as did folk-revival-oriented record companies. Ramblin Jack Elliott Ramblin Jack Elliot (born Elliott Charles Adnopoz, August 1, 1931) is an American folk performer. ... Robert Allen Zimmerman, known as Bob Dylan (born May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, musician and poet whose enduring contributions to American song are often compared, in fame and influence, to those of Stephen Foster, Irving Berlin, Woody Guthrie, and Hank Williams. ... Joan Baezs 1975 bestseller Diamonds & Rust. ... A guitar is a stringed musical instrument. ...

Many of this group of popular folk singers maintained an idealistic, leftist/progressive political orientation. This is perhaps not surprising. Folk music is easily identified with the ordinary working people who created it, and preserving treasured things against the claimed relentless encroachments of capitalism is likewise a goal of many politically progressive people. Thus, in the 1960s such singers as Joan Baez, Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan followed in Guthrie's footsteps and to begin writing "protest music" and topical songs, particularly against the Vietnam War, and likewise expressed in song their support for the American Civil Rights Movement. The influential Welsh-language singer-songwriter, Dafydd Iwan, may also be mentioned as a similar example operating in a different cutural context. Some critics, especially proponents of the ethnocentric Neofolk genre, claim that this type of American 'progressive' folk is not folk music at all, but 'antifolk'. This is based on the idea that as liberal politics generally eschews the importance of ethnicity, it is incompatible with all folkish traditions. Proponents of this view often cite romantic nationalism as the only political tradition that 'fits' with folk music. Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Capitalism Capitalism has been defined in various ways. ... The 1960s decade refers to the years from 1960 to 1969, inclusive. ... Joan Baezs 1975 bestseller Diamonds & Rust. ... Philip David Ochs (December 19, 1940 – April 9, 1976) was a protest singer (or, as he preferred, a topical singer) popular during the 1960s. ... Robert Allen Zimmerman, known as Bob Dylan (born May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, musician and poet whose enduring contributions to American song are often compared, in fame and influence, to those of Stephen Foster, Irving Berlin, Woody Guthrie, and Hank Williams. ... Woody Guthrie with Guitar Woodrow Wilson Guthrie (July 14, 1912–October 3, 1967), known as Woody Guthrie was an influential and prolific American folk musician noted for his identification with the common man, the poor and the downtrodden, and for his abhorrence of fascism and exploitation. ... A protest song is a song intended to protest perceived problems in society such as injustice, racial discrimination, war, globalization, inflation, social inequalities. ... A topical song is a song that comments on current political and social events. ... Combatants Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) United States of America South Korea Thailand Australia New Zealand the Philippines Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) Commanders Strength ~1,200,000 (1968) ~420,000 (1968) Casualties South Vietnamese dead: 1,250,000+ US dead: 58,226 US... Martin Luther King is perhaps most famous for his I Have a Dream speech, given in front of the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom The Civil Rights Movement refers to a set of noted events and reform movements aimed at abolishing public and... Dafydd Iwan (born August 24, 1943) is the president of Plaid Cymru -- The Party of Wales. ... Neofolk is a form of folk music that emerged from European ideals and post-industrial music circles. ... ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ...

In Ireland, The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem (although the members were all Irish born, the group became famous while based in New York's Greenwich Village, it must be noted), The Dubliners, Clannad, Planxty, The Chieftains, The Pogues and a variety of other folk bands have done much over recent years to revitalise and repopularise Irish traditional music. These bands were rooted, to a greater or lesser extent, in a living tradition of Irish music, and they benefitted from collection efforts on the part of the likes of Seamus Ennis and Peter Kennedy, among others. The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem from left to right: Tom, Pat, Liam, and Tommy Makem The Clancy Brothers were an Irish folk music band, most popular in the 1960s, who are often credited with popularizing Irish traditional music in the United States. ... The Dubliners are an Irish folk band, one of the older bands in music today. ... Clannad won a Grammy in the Best New Age Album category for their 1997 release Landmarks. ... Planxty was an Irish folk music band formed in the 1970s by Christy Moore, Donal Lunny, Andy Irvine (a founder of the Irish mid-sixties group Sweeneys Men), and Liam OFlynn (piper). ... The Chieftains are an Irish musical group founded in 1962, known for performing and popularizing Irish traditional music. ... The Pogues in concert, 2004 The Pogues are a popular Anglo Irish folk rock band of the 1980s and 90s. ... Ireland is an island in the North Atlantic politically divided between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. ... Séamus Ennis (1919 - 1982) was an Irish piper, singer and folk-song collector. ...

In Hungary, the group Muzsikás and the singer Márta Sebestyén became known throughout the world due to their numerous American tours and their participation in the Hollywood movie The English Patient and Sebestyén's work with the Deep Forest band. Muzsikás is a Hungarian musical group playing mainly folk music of Hungary and other countries and peoples of the region. ... Sebetyén Márta (August 19, 1957, Budapest - ) is a Hungarian Folk vocalist, known for adaptations of Somogy and Erdély folk songs, some of which appear in Deep Forests La Boheme album. ... The English Patient is a 1992 novel by Michael Ondaatje which deals with the gradually revealed histories of a critically burned man, his Canadian nurse, a Canadian thief, and an Indian sapper in the British Army as they live out the end of World War II in an Italian monastery. ... Sebetyén Márta (August 19, 1957, Budapest - ) is a Hungarian Folk vocalist, known for adaptations of Somogy and Erdély folk songs, some of which appear in Deep Forests La Boheme album. ... Deep Forest is a musical group comprising of two French musicians, Eric Mouquet and Michel Sanchez. ...

The blending of folk and popular genres

The experience of the last century suggests that as soon as a folk tradition comes to be marketed as popular music, its musical content will quickly be modified to become more like popular music. Such modified folk music often incorporates electric guitars, drum kit, or forms of rhythmic syncopation that are characteristic of popular music but were absent in the original. An electric guitar is a type of guitar with a solid or semi-solid body that utilizes electronic pickups to convert the vibration of the steel-cored strings into electrical current. ... A drum kit (or drum set or trap set - the latter an old-fashioned term) is a collection of drums, cymbals and other percussion instruments arranged for convenient playing by a sole percussionist (drummer), usually for jazz, rock, or other types of contemporary music. ... In music, syncopation is the stressing of a normally unstressed beat in a bar or the failure to sound a tone on an accented beat. ...

One example of this sort is contemporary country music, which descends ultimately from a rural American folk tradition, but has evolved to become vastly different from its original model. 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. Country music, also called country and western music or country-western, is an amalgam of popular musical forms developed in the Southern United States, with roots in traditional folk music, Celtic Music, Blues, Gospel music, and Old-time music. ... Hip hop music (also referred to as rap or rap music) is a style of popular music. ... Bluegrass music is considered a form of American roots music with its own roots in the English, Irish and Scottish traditional music of immigrants from the British Isles (particularly the Scots-Irish immigrants of Appalachia), as well as the music of rural African-Americans, jazz, and blues. ... Old-time music, a traditional style of American music, has roots in Irish, Scottish and African folk music. ... The blues is a vocal and instrumental form of music based on a pentatonic scale and a characteristic twelve-bar chord progression. ... Jazz is an original American musical art form originating around the early 1920s in New Orleans, rooted in Western music technique and theory, and is marked by the profound cultural contributions of African Americans. ...

As less traditional forms of folk music gain popularity, one often observes tension between so-called "purists" or "traditionalists" and the innovators. For example, traditionalists were indignant when Bob Dylan began to use an electric guitar. His electrified performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival was to prove to be an early focal point for this controversy. Robert Allen Zimmerman, known as Bob Dylan (born May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, musician and poet whose enduring contributions to American song are often compared, in fame and influence, to those of Stephen Foster, Irving Berlin, Woody Guthrie, and Hank Williams. ... 1965 (MCMLXV) was a common year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1965 calendar). ... The Newport Folk Festival is an annual folk-oriented music festival founded in 1959 by George Wein, founder of the already-well-established Newport Jazz Festival, and his partner, Albert Grossman. ...

Sometimes, however, the exponents of amplified music were bands such as Fairport Convention, Pentangle, Mr. Fox and Steeleye Span who saw the electrification of traditional musical forms as a means to reach a far wider audience, and their efforts have been largely recognised for what they were by even some of the most die-hard of purists. Traditional folk music forms also merged with rock and roll to form the hybrid generally known as folk rock which evolved through performers such as The Byrds, Simon and Garfunkel, The Mamas and the Papas, and many others. Cover of Heyday: BBC Radio Sessions 1968-1969. ... Pentangle is a British folk-rock band. ... Mr. ... Steeleye Span is a British folk-rock band that has been active since 1970. ... Rock and roll (also spelled Rock n Roll, especially in its first decade), also called rock, is a form of popular music, usually featuring vocals (often with vocal harmony), electric guitars and a strong back beat; other instruments, such as the saxophone, are common in some styles. ... Bob Dylans folk-rock album, Blonde On Blonde Folk-rock is a musical genre, combining elements of folk music and rock music. ... The Byrds (formed in Los Angeles, California in 1964) were an American rock group. ... Simon and Garfunkel, Bookends Simon and Garfunkel are an American popular music duo comprising Paul Simon and Arthur Art Garfunkel. ... The Mamas & the Papas were a leading vocal group of the 1960s, and one of the few American groups to maintain widespread success during the British Invasion, along with The Beach Boys. ...

Since the 1970s a genre of "contemporary folk", fuelled by new singer-songwriters, has continued to make the coffee-house circuit and keep the tradition of acoustic non-classical music alive in the United States. Such artists include Steve Goodman, John Prine, Cheryl Wheeler, Bill Morrisey, Christine Lavin and Gundula Krause. Lavin in particular has become prominent as a leading promoter of this musical genre in recent years. Some, such as Lavin and Wheeler, inject a great deal of humor in their songs and performances, although much of their music is also deeply personal and sometimes satirical. While from Ireland The Pogues and The Corrs brought traditional tunes back into the album charts. The 1970s decade refers to the years from 1970 to 1979, inclusive. ... Steve Goodman (July 25, 1948–September 20, 1984) was an American folk music singer and songwriter. ... Prine performing at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco, CA, October 3, 2004. ... Cheryl Wheeler (born July 10, 1951) is a New England-based singer/songwriter of contemporary folk music. ... Christine Lavin is a New York City based singer, songwriter, and promoter of contemporary folk music. ... Gundula Krause, born 7 July 1966 in Göttingen, is a German folk violinist. ... The Pogues in concert, 2004 The Pogues are a popular Anglo Irish folk rock band of the 1980s and 90s. ... The Corrs are a folk rock band from Ireland, consisting of three sisters and one brother from the Corr family, who rose to prominence in the late 1990s. ... An album is a collection of related audio tracks, released together commercially in an audio format to the public. ...

In the 1980s a group of artists like Phranc and The Knitters propagated a form of folk music also called country punk or folk punk, which eventually evolved into Alt country. More recently the same spirit has been embraced and expanded on by performers such as Dave Alvin, Ani DiFranco, and Steve Earle. At the same time, a line of singers from Baez to Phil Ochs have continued to use traditional forms for original material. Phranc Phranc (born Susan Gottlieb in 1958) is an influential singer-songwriter from California whose career has spanned several decades. ... The Knitters are a Los Angeles based band that play country and folk music. ... Folk punk is a genre of music that combines elements of folk and punk rock music. ... Alternative country can refer to several ideas. ... Dave Alvin (born November 11, 1955, in Downey, California, USA) is a Country/Rock guitarist, singer and songwriter. ... Ani DiFranco Ani DiFranco (IPA: ɑ-ni) (born Angela Marie Difranco on September 23, 1970) is a singer, guitarist, and songwriter. ... Earle performing at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco, CA, October 2, 2005. ... Philip David Ochs (December 19, 1940 – April 9, 1976) was a protest singer (or, as he preferred, a topical singer) popular during the 1960s. ...

The appropriation of folk has even continued into hard rock and heavy metal, with bands such as Skyclad, Waylander and Finntroll melding distinctive elements of folk styles from a wide variety of traditions, including in many cases traditional instruments such as fiddles, tin whistles and bagpipes as an element of their sound. Unlike other folk-related genres, folk metal shies away from monotheistic religion in favour of more ancient pagan inspired themes. Hard rock is a form of rock and roll music which finds its closest roots in early 1960s garage rock. ... Heavy metal, sometimes referred to as simply metal, is a form of music characterised by aggressive, driving rhythms and highly amplified distorted guitars. ... The lineup at the time of the Folkémon album. ... Waylander is a Irish band influential in the realms of Celtic metal and folk metal. ... Finntroll is a Troll metal band from Finland. ... The violin is a stringed musical instrument that has four strings tuned a fifth apart. ... Tin whistles in a variety of makes and keys The tin whistle, also called the whistle, pennywhistle, Irish whistle, or, anachronously, the flageolet, is a simple six-holed woodwind instrument. ... A bagpipe performer in Amsterdam. ... Folk metal is a sub-genre of heavy metal that incorporates elements of folk music. ... Paganism (from Latin paganus) and Heathenry are catch-all terms which have come to connote a broad set of spiritual/religious beliefs and practices of a natural religion, as opposed to the Abrahamic religions. ...

A similar stylistic shift, without using the "folk music" name, has occurred with the phenomenon of Celtic music, which in many cases is based on an amalgamation of Irish traditional music, Scottish traditional music, and other traditional musics associated with lands in which Celtic languages are or were spoken (regardless of any significant research showing that the musics have any genuine genetic relationship; so Breton music and Galician music are often included in the genre). Celtic music is a broad grouping of musical genres that evolved out of the folk musical traditions of the Celtic peoples of Western Europe. ... Ireland is an island in the North Atlantic politically divided between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. ... Scotland is a Celtic-Germanic country, located to the north of England on the island of Great Britain. ... Proto-Indo-European Indo-European studies Celtic languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages. ... Brittany is on the northwest coast of France and is a region unique in that country in its Celtic cultural derivation. ... The Spanish regions of Galicia, Asturias and Cantabria are clustered together in the northern part of the country. ...

Neofolk music is a modern form of music that began in the 1980's. Fusing traditional European folk music with post-industrial music forms, historical topics, philosophical commentary, traditional songs and paganism, the genre is largely European. Although it is not uncommon for neofolk artists to be entirely acoustic, playing with entirely traditional instruments. Neofolk is a form of folk music that emerged from European ideals and post-industrial music circles. ... Post-industrial is a term used mainly by a number of industrial music enthusiasts to refer to a grouping of music genres related to the original industrial music movement. ... Paganism (from Latin paganus) and Heathenry are catch-all terms which have come to connote a broad set of spiritual/religious beliefs and practices of a natural religion, as opposed to the Abrahamic religions. ...

One of the more unusual offshoots of modern folk music is the genre now known as filk, a form of music defined primarily by who its audience is. Filk is a form of music created from within fandom, and performed generally late at night at science fiction conventions. ...

Another trend is "antifolk," begun in New York City in the 1980s by Lach [3] in response to the confines traditional folk music. It now has a home at the Antihootenany in the East Village, where artists like Beck, the Moldy Peaches and Nellie McKay got their starts, and artists such as Robin Aigner[4]'s Royal Pine[5], Matt Singer[6], Phoebe Kreutz and Curtis Eller[7] continue to push the envelope of "folk." Lach is part of the Anti-folk movement. ...

Folk music is still extremely popular among some audiences today, with folk music clubs meeting to share traditional-style songs, and there are major folk music festivals in many countries, eg the Port Fairy Folk Festival is a major annual event in Australia attracting top international folk performers as well as many local artists. Indeed, even for those who consider themselves hip, the arrival of Americana and the music of Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Devendra Banhart has shown that Folk Music can still be cutting edge. An apple pie and baseball bat sitting atop an American flag. ... Will Oldham in concert Will Oldham is an American songwriter, actor, and musician born in Louisville, Kentucky. ... Devendra Banhart / © Laurent Orseau. ...

The Cambridge Folk Festival in Cambridge, England is always sold out within days, and is noted for having a very wide definition of who can be invited as folk musicians. The "club tents" allow attendees to discover large numbers of unknown artists, who, for ten or fifteen minutes each, present their work to the festival audience. The Cambridge folk festival is renowned for its eclectic mix of music and a wide definition of what might be considered folk. ... Map of the Cambridgeshire area (1904) The city of Cambridge is an old English university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire. ... Royal motto (French): Dieu et mon droit (Translated: God and my right) Englands location within the British Isles Official language English de facto Capital London de facto Largest city London Area – Total Ranked 1st UK 130,395 km² Population – Total (mid-2004) – Total (2001 Census) – Density Ranked 1st UK...

Pastiche and parody

Popular culture sometimes creates pastiches of folk music for its own ends. Popular culture, or pop culture, is the vernacular (peoples) culture that prevails in any given society. ... The neutrality of this article is disputed. ...

One famous example is the pseudo-ballad sung about brave Sir Robin in the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Enthusiasts for folk music might properly consider this song to be pastiche and not parody, because the tune is pleasant and far from inept, and the topic being lampooned is not balladry but the medieval heroic tradition. The arch-shaped melodic form of this song (first and last lines low in pitch, middle lines high) is characteristic of traditional English folk music. A more recent similarly incisive send-up of folk music, this time American in origin, is the film A Mighty Wind by Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy. Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a comedy film from 1975. ... In contemporary usage, parody is a form of satire that imitates another work of art in order to ridicule it. ... A Mighty Wind is a 2003 mockumentary about a folk music reunion concert and the three groups that must come together to perform on national television for the first time in years. ... Christopher Guest as Nigel Tufnel in This Is Spinal Tap. ... Eugene Levy Eugene Levy (born December 17, 1946 in Hamilton, Ontario) is a Jewish-Canadian actor, television director, producer and writer who is best known for his work in Canadian television series and American movies and television series. ...

In the magazine fRoots there was a long-running parody of the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS). They were called "Dance Earnestly and Forget About Song Society" (DEAFASS). DEAFASS supporters favored the accordion over the melodeon and the string bass over the electric bass. A collection of magazines A magazine is a periodical publication containing a variety of articles, generally financed by advertising and/or purchase by readers. ... In contemporary usage, parody is a form of satire that imitates another work of art in order to ridicule it. ... Cecil Sharp House in London is home to the English Folk Dance and Song Society The English Folk Dance and Song Society was formed in 1932 by the merger of two organisations, the Folk Song Society and the English Folk Dance Society formed by Cecil Sharp in 1911. ... A button accordion An accordion is a musical instrument of the handheld bellows-driven free reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as squeezeboxes. ... The terms melodeon and melodion can refer to any of several related musical instruments of the free reed aerophone family: A type of 19th century reed organ with a foot-operated vacuum bellows, and a piano keyboard. ... Side and front views of a modern double bass with a French bow. ... Fender Precision Bass Bass Guitar is a commonly spoken phrase used to refer to the electric bass and horizontal acoustic basses, a stringed instrument similar in design to the electric guitar, but larger in size, commonly fretted and sometimes fretless and with a lower range. ...

Another instance of pastiche is the notoriously well-known theme song for the television show Gilligan's Island (music by George Wyle, lyrics by Sherwood Schwartz). This tune is also folk-like in character, and in fact is written in a traditional folk mode (modes are a type of musical scale); the mode of "Gilligan's Island" is ambiguous between Dorian and Aeolian. The lyrics begin with the traditional folk device in which the singer invites his hearers to listen to the tale that follows. Moreover, two of the stanzas repeat the final short line, a common device in English folk stanzas. However, the raising of the key by a semitone with each new verse is an unmistakable trait of commercial music and never occurred in the original folk tradition. The cast of Gilligans Island. ... Sherwood Schwartz (born November 14, 1916 in Passaic, New Jersey) is an American television producer. ... This article is about modes as used in music. ... In music, a scale is an unordered collection of notes or pitches, as opposed to a series of intervals, which is a musical mode. ... Popular music is music belonging to any of a number of musical styles that are accessible to the general public and mostly distributed commercially. ...

Folk music is easy to parody because it is, at present, a popular music genre that relies on a traditional music genre. As such, it is likely to lack the sophistication and glamour that attach to other forms of popular music. Folk music satire ranges from the worst excesses of Rambling Syd Rumpo and Bill Oddie to the deft and subtle artistry of Sid Kipper, Eric Idle and Tom Lehrer. Even "serious" folk musicians are not averse to poking fun at the form from time to time, for example Martin Carthy's devastating rendition of "All the Hard Cheese of Old England" (written by Les Barker), to the tune of "All the Hard Times of Old England", Robb Johnson's "Lack of Jolly Ploughboy," and more recently "I'm Sending an E-mail to Santa" by the Yorkshire-based harmony group Artisan. Other musicians have been known to take the tune of a traditional folk song and add their own words, often humourous, or on a similar-sounding yet different subject; these include The Wurzels and The Incredible Dr. Busker. In contemporary usage, parody is a form of satire that imitates another work of art in order to ridicule it. ... Popular music is music belonging to any of a number of musical styles that are accessible to the general public and mostly distributed commercially. ... Rambling Syd Rumpo was a folk singer character played by English comedian Kenneth Williams in the radio comedy series Round the Horne. ... Bill Oddie William Edgar (Bill) Oddie, OBE, BA, MA (Cantab. ... Sid Kipper is the nom de plume of Chris Sugden, a Norfolk humorist. ... Eric Idle Eric Idle (Born March 29, 1943) is an English comedian, actor and film director, as well as an author and accomplished guitarist/songwriter. ... Tom Lehrer in 1960. ... Martin Carthy (born May 21, 1941) is an English folk singer and guitarist who has remained one of the most influential figures in British traditional music, inspiring later artists such as Bob Dylan and Richard Thompson since he emerged as a young musician in the early days of the folk... Les Barker (born January 30, 1947) is an English poet. ... Robb Johnson is a musician and songwriter. ... The White Yorkshire rose. ... Artisan is an English vocal harmony trio, who sing acapella. ... Adge Cutler and The Wurzels, renamed The Wurzels after Cutlers death, are a British Scrumpy and Western band. ... This article needs cleanup. ...

Filk music is a closely related musical genre which originated as parodies of folk songs, and parody remains a dominant theme of the style. It is evolving into a true folk tradition, however, with songs learned orally that are undergoing the "folk process" of change in melody and text. Filk is a musical culture, genre, and community tied to science fiction/fantasy fandom, active since the early 1950s if concentrated primarily since the mid-1970s. ...

Folkies is the popular term for folk music enthusiasts.

While the term itself is neutral, and is used by some folk music enthusiasts in an informal and friendly manner, it has at times been used by the popular press at least since the late 1950s, as part of a light-hearted beatnik stereotype. Mass media is a term used to denote, as a class, that section of the media specifically conceived and designed to reach a very large audience (typically at least as large as the whole population of a nation state). ... Beatnik cartoon The term Beatnik was first coined by Herb Caen in an article published by the San Francisco Chronicle on April 2, 1958. ...

Media

Barbara Allen ( file info) Barbara Allen is a traditional folk ballad. Home on the Range ( file info) A recording of the song from Raiford Penitentiary, Florida, 1939. O Sole Mio ( file info) Sung by Enrico Caruso La Partida ( file info) Sung by Enrico Caruso "Dixie" ( file info) 1916 rendition of Dixie by the Metropolitan Mixed Chorus, with Frank Stanley, Ada Jones, Billy Murray Problems playing the files? See media help.

Image File history File links Gnome-speakernotes. ... Barbara Allen. ... Barbara Allen is a folk song known in dozens of versions. ... Image File history File links Home_on_the_range. ... Image File history File links O_Solo_Mio. ... Enrico Caruso Enrico Caruso (February 25, 1873–August 2, 1921) was one of the most famous tenors in the history of opera. ... Image File history File links La_Partida. ... Enrico Caruso Enrico Caruso (February 25, 1873–August 2, 1921) was one of the most famous tenors in the history of opera. ... Image File history File links Dixie_(1916). ... Sheet music cover, c. ... Ada Jones (June 1, 1873 – May 22, 1922) was a popular singer whose recordings ranged from 1905 to the early 1920s. ... Billy Murray (25 May 1877 - 17 August 1954) was one of the most popular singers in the United States in the early decades of the 20th century. ...

See also

• American folk music
• Cretan folk music
• Child Ballads
• Christmas carol
• Folk clubs
• Folk instrument - a description and list of folk instruments
• Hymn
• Serbian folk music - list of Serbian folk songs
• List of folk music genres
• Dancing Turtle
• Inn til vegge - a set of traditional music song games in Bergen, Norway

American roots music is a broad category of music including country music, bluegrass, gospel, ragtime, jug bands, Appalachian folk, blues, Tejano and Cajun and Native American music. ... Crete is an island that is a part of Greece. ... The Child Ballads are a collection of 305 ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, collected by Francis James Child. ... Singing carols: John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together A Christmas carol is a carol (song or hymn) whose lyrics are on the theme of Christmas, or the winter season in general. ... Folk clubs were primarily an urban phenomenon of the 1960s and 1970s. ... ... A hymn is a song specifically written as a song of praise, adoration or prayer, typically addressed to a god. ... List of serbian folk songs: Ajd d idemo, Rado Ajde Jano Ajde Kato Bele ruze nezne ruze Biljana platno belese Bledi mesec Bolujem ja Cetir konja debela Ciganka sam mala Crven fesic Cujes seko Duni vjetre Ej cija frula Fijaker Stari Govori se da me varas Hladan vetar poljem piri... This is a listing of Wikipedia resources on genres of folk music, arranged alphabetically by nation and ethnicity. ... Inn til vegge is a somehow shorthand slang for Inn til veggen, which litteraly means Up against the wall or Line up against the wall. Its a Norwegian set of traditional music song games in Bergen, Norway, usually played by minors. ... County Hordaland District Midhordland Municipality NO-1201 Administrative centre Bergen Mayor (2004) Herman Friele (H) Official language form Neutral Area  - Total  - Land  - Percentage Ranked 215 465 km² 445 km² 0. ...

External links

General

• The Folk File A huge, rich, and well-written compendium of material about folk music, especially that of North America and the British Isles.

Folksong material

• mudcat.org, the home of the Digital Traditions (DIGITRAD) folksong database. The latest (2002) edition of DIGITRAD contains lyrics, and in some cases tunes or chords, for around 9000 folk rock, folk revival, and authentic American, English, and Irish folk songs, as well as some parodies. The database may be searched online, or downloaded as a standalone application. Another portal to DIGITRAD with file formats converted to emerging standards (e.g. ABC) is available at http://sniff.numachi.com/~rickheit/dtrad/.
• Wandering Whistler Music Archives The Wandering Whistler Music Archives contain sheet music, MIDI files, some with recordings, chords, and lyrics, for around 1000 Irish folk tunes and songs, with a heavy emphasis on Irish and Scottish folk.
• The Traditional Ballad Index search page. Provides bibliographic information and some theoretical genealogical information for many ballads in English.
• http://www.canugwerin.org/ The website of the Welsh Folk-Song Society, founded in 1906.
• Photos of Regional and Cultural Genres of Music and Dance
• Balkan folk music downloads
• http://www.smsu.edu/folksong/maxhunter/. The Max Hunter Folk Song Collection is a set of about 1600 field recordings made by Max Hunter between 1956 and 1976 in the Ozark Mountain region of Missouri. The recordings are downloadable.
• Northumbrian Traditional Music The folk music of Northumbria in North-East England.
• The folk music in the county of Nice (France) : hundreds of MIDI files, lyrics, music sheets.
• http://www.turkudostlari.net (Turkey) :Turk, Middle East,Balkan MIDI files, Turkish folk music lyrics, music sheets. (In Turkish)
• http://ingeb.org. A list of folksongs from all over the world
• http://www.volksmusiknet.ch/. Swiss Folkmusic
• Musipedia contains several thousand folk music tunes. musipedia.org
• http://www.tritonus.ch/. Swiss Folkmusic and -instruments
• Pticice - a free MP3 album of native Serbian music
• http://folktunes.org/. The Folktunes Wiki, with streaming and downloadable songs, lyrics, and all things folk. In its infancy.
• FolkAlley.com - 24-hour streaming folk music
• Folk and Roots- A guide to the folk scene in the UK
• Music from the Florida Folklife Collection - From Shove It Over, a WPA recording of a work song performed by Zora Neale Hurston, to Orange Blossom Special, performed by Gamble Rogers and Will McLean, this CD spans fifty years of Florida folk music. The recordings are downloadable.
• Wisconsin Folksong Collection, 1937-1946. Presented by the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center and Mills Music Library Special Collections. The Wisconsin Folksong Collection, 1937-1946 contains Wisconsin field recordings, notes, and photographs made by UW-Madison faculty member Helene Stratman-Thomas as part of the Wisconsin Folk Music Recording Project, co-sponsored by the University of Wisconsin and the Library of Congress during the summers of 1940, 1941, and 1946; and recordings collected by song catcher Sidney Robertson Cowell during the summer of 1937 for the Special Skills Division of the Resettlement Administration.

abc is a language designed to notate music - tunes and lyrics - in an ascii format. ... Musipedia is a search engine for identifying pieces of music. ...

Folk Festivals

• Folkfestival Dranouter: An annual folk festival in Belgium, attracting over 70 000 visitors, which combines traditional with contemporary music.

• Cambridge Folk Festival A long running, annual folk festival in Cambridge, UK.
• Warwick Folk Festival A long running, annual folk festival in Warwick, UK.

History

• People's history: Political folk song in France, 1789-1989
• People's history: Political song in Italy, 1862-1999

Pastiche and parody

• A web page on "The Ballad of Sir Robin", with lyrics and sound file
• Gilligan's Island theme:
  • Sound files
  • Lyrics: one of many sites

References

• English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians. Collected by Cecil J. Sharp. Ed. Maud Karpeles. 1932. London. Oxford University Press.
• Carson, Ciaran (1997). Last Night's Fun: In and Out of Time with Irish Music. North Point Press.
• Harker, David (1985). Fakesong: The Manufacture of British 'Folksong', 1700 to the Present Day. Cited in van der Merwe (1989).
• Karpeles, Maud. An Introduction to English Folk Song. 1973. Oxford. Oxford University Press.
• Middleton, Richard (1990/2002). Studying Popular Music. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0335152759.
• Seeger, Charles (1980). Cited in Middleton (2002)
• Sharp, Cecil. Folk Song: Some Conclusions. 1907. Charles River Books
• van der Merwe, Peter (1989). Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of Twentieth-Century Popular Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0193161214.