Folk Music
Folk music that which we all know and many of us love, means different things to different people. While folk music generally speaks of a way of life which has gone or is about to disappear, there are three different types of music which people around the world refer to when they say folk music. Originally, Folk music was synonymous with Traditional music, but it can now also mean popular music which was based on Traditional music. Finally, in the United States, people think of the American Folk music revival, spawned by musicians such as Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger and Woodie Guntrie. But no matter what one technically considers to be folk music, one thing is certain: there will always be fans.
The term Folk music comes from England, where they used a variation on the German word “volk”, meaning people, to refer to the ordinary, illiterate people. The word was used to emphasize that folk music emerged from the communities of ordinary people.
Folk music became especially popular in the 20th centuries, and developed into what we now consider to be modern folk music. It began traditionally: Woodie Guthrie began by singing the songs his mother had sung to him when he was a child. This commercial music led to the immense popularity of folk music in the 30s and 40s, but it really reached its height in the 50s. The Hootenanny TV series is widely accepted as being the peak of traditional Folk music in the United States before the Beatles and “Folk Rock” came along.
The 60s saw an era in which folk music was used as a means for protest against the Vietnam war and support for the American Civil Rights Movement. By 1975 the folk popularity had mostly died out, and there were no more revivals until the late 1990s.
The 20th century Folk music saw the incorporation of popular music combined with traditional folk. Many of the most popular Folk songs of the 29th century incorporated electric guitars or drum kits, which were never used in original Folk music. Modern country music is a descendent from Folk music, and many of the heavy metal bands of the 80s incorporated aspects of Folk music in their styles, Skyclad and Waylander being two of them. Celtic music is also of Folk origin, as is Scottish traditional music. In fact, most forms of music today have at least some ties to traditional Folk music.
Folk music is still popular today, with festivals all over the United States. In England, the Cambridge Folk Music Festival always sells out in a couple of days and in Australia the Port Fairy Folk Festival is an incredibly popular event. Folk clubs all over the world meet regularly to discuss and listen to Folk music, sharing traditional style songs. There is no doubt that Folk music is still popular in the world today, and it may very well see another revival in the United States and around the world in the coming years.