96-605: David Kenneth Ritz Van Ronk (June 30, 1936 – February 10, 2002) was an American folk singer. An important figure in the American folk music revival and New York City 's Greenwich Village scene in the 1960s, he was nicknamed the "Mayor of MacDougal Street ". Van Ronk's work ranged from old English ballads to blues , gospel , rock , New Orleans jazz , and swing . He was also known for performing instrumental ragtime guitar music, especially his transcription of "St. Louis Tickle" and Scott Joplin 's " Maple Leaf Rag ". Van Ronk
192-482: A chuigushou . Ensembles consisting of mouth organs ( sheng ), shawms ( suona ), flutes ( dizi ) and percussion instruments (especially yunluo gongs ) are popular in northern villages; their music is descended from the imperial temple music of Beijing, Xi'an , Wutai shan and Tianjin . Xi'an drum music, consisting of wind and percussive instruments, is popular around Xi'an, and has received some commercial popularity outside of China. Another important instrument
288-430: A melody , often with repeating sections , and usually played a number of times. A collection of tunes with structural similarities is known as a tune-family . America's Musical Landscape says "the most common form for tunes in folk music is AABB, also known as binary form ." In some traditions, tunes may be strung together in medleys or " sets ." Throughout most of human history, listening to recorded music
384-522: A naming rights deal with Washington Mutual . After Washington Mutual's collapse in 2009, the name reverted to The Theater at Madison Square Garden. In 2018, the theater signed a deal with Hulu to become the Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden . In 2023, the theater reverted to the name The Theater at Madison Square Garden . No seat is more than 177 feet (54 m) from the 30-by-64-foot (9.1 by 19.5 m) stage. Due to its location beneath
480-619: A pipa , as well as other traditional instruments. The music is generally sorrowful and typically deals with love-stricken people. Further south, in Shantou , Hakka and Chaozhou , zheng ensembles are popular. Sizhu ensembles use flutes and bowed or plucked string instruments to make harmonious and melodious music that has become popular in the West among some listeners. These are popular in Nanjing and Hangzhou , as well as elsewhere along
576-512: A "Traditional music" category that subsequently evolved into others. The term "folk", by the start of the 21st century, could cover singer-songwriters, such as Donovan from Scotland and American Bob Dylan , who emerged in the 1960s and much more. This completed a process to where "folk music" no longer meant only traditional folk music. Traditional folk music often includes sung words , although folk instrumental music occurs commonly in dance music traditions. Narrative verse looms large in
672-426: A Good Old Wagon", a song teasing a worn-out lover, which he ruefully remarked had seemed humorous to him back in 1962. He continued to perform for four decades and gave his last concert just a few months before his death. Van Ronk was married to Terri Thal in the 1960s, lived for many years with Joanne Grace, then married Andrea Vuocolo, with whom he spent the rest of his life. On February 10, 2002, Van Ronk died in
768-482: A New York hospital of cardiopulmonary failure while undergoing postoperative treatment for colon cancer . He died before completing work on his memoirs, which were finished by his collaborator, Elijah Wald , and published in 2005 as The Mayor Of MacDougal Street . Van Ronk's guitar work, for which he credits Tom Paley as fingerpicking teacher, is noteworthy for both syncopation and precision. Revealing similarities to Mississippi John Hurt 's, Van Ronk's main influence
864-401: A class dynamic to popular understandings of American folk music. This was the final element of the foundation upon which the early folk music revivalists constructed their own view of Americanism. Sandburg's working-class Americans joined with the ethnically , racially , and regionally diverse citizens that other scholars, public intellectuals, and folklorists celebrated their own definitions of
960-419: 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'". One widely used definition is simply "Folk music is what the people sing." For Scholes, as well as for Cecil Sharp and Béla Bartók , there was a sense of the music of the country as distinct from that of
1056-587: A great body of English rural traditional song, music and dance, under the aegis of what became and remains the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS). Sharp campaigned with some success to have English traditional songs (in his own heavily edited and expurgated versions) to be taught to school children in hopes of reviving and prolonging the popularity of those songs. Throughout the 1960s and early to mid-1970s, American scholar Bertrand Harris Bronson published an exhaustive four-volume collection of
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#17327879831641152-399: A lower class" in culturally and socially stratified societies. In these terms, folk music may be seen as part of a "schema comprising four musical types: 'primitive' or 'tribal'; 'elite' or 'art'; 'folk'; and 'popular'." Music in this genre is also often called traditional music. Although the term is usually only descriptive, in some cases people use it as the name of a genre. For example,
1248-404: A particular interest in folklore. Carl Sandburg often traveled the U.S. as a writer and a poet. He also collected songs in his travels and, in 1927, published them in the book The American Songbag . Rachel Donaldson, a historian who worked for Vanderbilt, later stated this about The American Songbird in her analysis of the folk music revival. "In his collections of folk songs, Sandburg added
1344-401: A people's folklore , or music performed by custom over a long period of time. It has been contrasted with commercial and classical styles . The term originated in the 19th century, but folk music extends beyond that. Starting in the mid-20th century, a new form of popular folk music evolved from traditional folk music. This process and period is called the (second) folk revival and reached
1440-695: A possible better system, through the lens of the Great Depression. Woody Guthrie exemplifies songwriters and artists with such an outlook. Folk music festivals proliferated during the 1930s. President Franklin Roosevelt was a fan of folk music, hosted folk concerts at the White House , and often patronized folk festivals. One prominent festival was Sarah Gertrude Knott 's National Folk Festival , established in St. Louis, Missouri in 1934. Under
1536-500: A posthumous memoir, The Mayor of MacDougal Street (2005) written with Elijah Wald . Anecdotes from the book were used as a source for the film Inside Llewyn Davis . Van Ronk and Richard Ellington collected and edited The Bosses' Songbook: [32] Songs to Stifle the Flames of Discontent, Second Edition – A Collection of Modern Political Songs and Satire (Richard Ellington, publisher: New York, 1959). Folk music Folk music
1632-486: A record 12 sold-out shows in a row at the theater, breaking the previous record held by Bruce Springsteen . The current record belongs to Billy Joel , who has sold out more than 76 consecutive shows at the theater. In 2004, it served as the venue of the Survivor: All-Stars finale. In 2005 and 2011, Peter Pan starring Cathy Rigby in the title role returned to New York City at the theater. It
1728-621: A reference to beautiful women, while in the past they were notorious for their erotic content. The village "mountain songs" ( shan'ge ) of Jiangsu province were also well known for their amorous themes. Other regional song traditions include the "strummed lyrics" ( tanci ) of the Lower Yangtze Delta, the Cantonese Wooden Fish tradition ( muyu or muk-yu ) and the Drum Songs ( guci ) of north China. In
1824-553: A revolutionary tool to preserve vanishing musical forms. The earliest American folk music scholars were with the American Folklore Society (AFS), which emerged in the late 1800s. Their studies expanded to include Native American music , but still treated folk music as a historical item preserved in isolated societies as well. In North America, during the 1930s and 1940s, the Library of Congress worked through
1920-567: A traditional song would undergo a process of improvement 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 traditional song to become more aesthetically appealing, due to incremental community improvement. Literary interest in the popular ballad form dates back at least to Thomas Percy and William Wordsworth . English Elizabethan and Stuart composers had often evolved their music from folk themes,
2016-434: A tragic or regretful nature, prominently figures in many folk traditions. Nursery rhymes , children's songs and nonsense verse used to amuse or quiet children also are frequent subjects of traditional songs. Music transmitted by word of mouth through a community, in time, develops many variants, since this transmission cannot produce word-for-word and note-for-note accuracy. In addition, folk singers may choose to modify
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#17327879831642112-464: A zenith in the 1960s. This form of music is sometimes called contemporary folk music or folk revival music to distinguish it from earlier folk forms. Smaller, similar revivals have occurred elsewhere in the world at other times, but the term folk music has typically not been applied to the new music created during those revivals. This type of folk music also includes fusion genres such as folk rock , folk metal , and others. While contemporary folk music
2208-494: Is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival . Some types of folk music may be called world music . Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted orally, music with unknown composers, music that is played on traditional instruments, music about cultural or national identity, music that changes between generations (folk process), music associated with
2304-646: Is a theater located in New York City's Madison Square Garden (MSG). It seats between 2,000 and 5,600, and is used for concerts, shows, sports, meetings, and other events. It is located beneath the main Madison Square Garden arena that hosts MSG's larger events. When the Garden opened in 1968, the theater was known as the Felt Forum , in honor of then-president Irving Mitchell Felt . In
2400-507: Is a genre generally distinct from traditional folk music, in U.S. English it shares the same name, and it often shares the same performers and venues as traditional folk music. The terms folk music , folk song , and folk dance are comparatively recent expressions. They are extensions of the term folklore , which was coined in 1846 by the English antiquarian William Thoms to describe "the traditions, customs, and superstitions of
2496-408: Is an ancient folk song from India, a country of Asia, of Meiteis of Manipur , that is an example of Asian folk music, and how they put it into its own genre. Archaeological discoveries date Chinese folk music back 7000 years; it is largely based on the pentatonic scale . Han traditional weddings and funerals usually include a form of oboe called a suona , and apercussive ensembles called
2592-530: Is generally no "authoritative" version of song. Researchers in traditional songs have encountered countless versions of the Barbara Allen ballad throughout the English-speaking world, and these versions often differ greatly from each other. The original is not known; many versions can lay an equal claim to authenticity. Influential folklorist Cecil Sharp felt that these competing variants of
2688-402: Is the sheng , a type of Chinese pipe , an ancient instrument that is ancestor of all Western free reed instruments, such as the accordion . Parades led by Western-type brass bands are common, often competing in volume with a shawm/chuigushou band. In southern Fujian and Taiwan , Nanyin or Nanguan is a genre of traditional ballads. They are sung by a woman accompanied by a xiao and
2784-672: Is the provenance of the American Folklife Center" at the library of Congress. Africa is a vast continent and its regions and nations have distinct musical traditions. The music of North Africa for the most part has a different history from Sub-Saharan African music traditions . The music and dance forms of the African diaspora , including African American music and many Caribbean genres like soca , calypso and Zouk ; and Latin American music genres like
2880-467: The Grammy Award previously used the terms "traditional music" and "traditional folk" for folk music that is not contemporary folk music. Folk music may include most indigenous music . From a historical perspective, traditional folk music had these characteristics: As a side-effect, the following characteristics are sometimes present: In folk music, a tune is a short instrumental piece ,
2976-474: The Great Depression . Regionalism and cultural pluralism grew as influences and themes. During this time folk music began to become enmeshed with political and social activism themes and movements. Two related developments were the U.S. Communist Party's interest in folk music as a way to reach and influence Americans, and politically active prominent folk musicians and scholars seeing communism as
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3072-752: The PRC . Folk songs have been recorded since ancient times in China. The term Yuefu was used for a broad range of songs such as ballads, laments, folk songs, love songs, and songs performed at court. China is a vast country, with a multiplicity of linguistic and geographic regions. Folk songs are categorized by geographic region, language type, ethnicity, social function (e.g. work song, ritual song, courting song) and musical type. Modern anthologies collected by Chinese folklorists distinguish between traditional songs, revolutionary songs, and newly invented songs. The songs of northwest China are known as "flower songs" ( hua'er ),
3168-481: The Traditional 18 Dances display the dancing of birds and animals. For example: Musical types include: The classical Sinhalese orchestra consists of five categories of instruments, but among the percussion instruments, the drum is essential for dance. The vibrant beat of the rhythm of the drums form the basic of the dance. The dancers' feet bounce off the floor and they leap and swirl in patterns that reflect
3264-439: The samba , Cuban rumba , salsa ; and other clave (rhythm) -based genres, were founded to varying degrees on the music of enslaved Africans , which has in turn influenced African popular music . Many Asian civilizations distinguish between art /court/classical styles and "folk" music. For example, the late Alam Lohar is an example of a South Asian singer who was classified as a folk singer. Khunung Eshei/Khuland Eshei
3360-687: The 1960s he supported radical left-wing political causes and was a member of the Libertarian League and the Trotskyist American Committee for the Fourth International (ACFI, later renamed the Workers League). In 1974, he appeared at "An Evening For Salvador Allende ", a concert organized by Phil Ochs , alongside such other performers as his old friend Bob Dylan, to protest the overthrow of
3456-432: The American folk, definitions that the folk revivalists used in constructing their own understanding of American folk music, and an overarching American identity". Prior to the 1930s, the study of folk music was primarily the province of scholars and collectors. The 1930s saw the beginnings of larger scale themes, commonalities, and linkages in folk music developing in the populace and practitioners as well, often related to
3552-575: The Association for Cultural Equity, is "distinct from the thousands of earlier recordings on acetate and aluminum discs he made from 1933 to 1942 under the auspices of the Library of Congress. This earlier collection—which includes the famous Jelly Roll Morton, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, and Muddy Waters sessions, as well as Lomax's prodigious collections made in Haiti and Eastern Kentucky (1937) —
3648-594: The Blues Project . Van Ronk once said, "Painting is all about space, and music is all about time." The Coen brothers film Inside Llewyn Davis follows a folk singer similar to Van Ronk, and incorporates anecdotes based on Van Ronk's life. He is mentioned in David Bowie 's 2013 song ‘(You Will) Set the World on Fire' on The Next Day album and was mentioned among the dead musicians and recording artists in
3744-560: The Cowardly Lion and Scarecrow, respectively. The theater was home to an annual staging of A Christmas Carol from 1994 to 2003. In 2001, the national tour of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella starring Jamie-Lynn Sigler in the title role, Eartha Kitt as the Fairy Godmother, and Paolo Montalban as Prince Christopher played at the theater. In 2003, popular Australian children's group The Wiggles performed
3840-557: The Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela, and to the United States. In October 21–22, 1986, Philippine singer Sharon Cuneta performed her New York concert as part of her U.S. concert tour and received a standing ovation. This was also together with the taping of her latest movie Jack and Jill sa Amerika featuring the cities visited during the tour included as a story plot in the movie. The New York concert at
3936-658: The Dutch ' Van ' name". He moved from Brooklyn to Queens around 1945 and began attending Holy Child Jesus Catholic School, whose students were mainly of Irish descent. He had been performing in a barbershop quartet since 1949, but left before finishing high school spending time in the Merchant Marine . His first professional gigs were playing tenor banjola, a wooden bodied combination of mandola and banjo, with various traditional jazz bands around New York City, of which he later observed: "We wanted to play traditional jazz in
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4032-628: The Felt Forum was opposite Elton John 's concert at Madison. In 1987, the comedy concert film Eddie Murphy Raw was filmed at the Forum and released in December of that year. On December 8, 1991, the draw for the 1994 FIFA World Cup qualification was held at the theater. WCW held two live events there, one on April 13, 1993, marking the first time an WCW event was ever held in New York City, and again on June 30, 1996. NXT held one event in
4128-625: The Midwest on records and thought he was pretty great, copied some of his recordings phrase for phrase. [...] Van Ronk could howl and whisper, turn blues into ballads and ballads into blues. I loved his style. He was what the city was all about. In Greenwich Village, Van Ronk was king of the street, he reigned supreme". Van Ronk gave guitar lessons in Greenwich Village, including to Christine Lavin , David Massengill , Terre Roche and Suzzy Roche . He influenced his protégé Danny Kalb and
4224-641: The Purple Sage) had a run from Dec. 4th-7th. Menudo 's February 5, 1983, concert at Madison Square Garden was held at the Felt Forum. It was member Xavier Serbiá 's last official concert with the band (he would return to the band in 1983 for another Madison Square Garden show to substitute for an ill Ricky Melendez ) and the first for member Ray Reyes . This concert was transmitted live to most Latin American countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico,
4320-602: The Rising Sun " on his first album which The Animals would later cover and which would become a chart-topping rock single for them in 1964, helping inaugurate the folk rock movement. Van Ronk received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers ( ASCAP ) in December 1997. Van Ronk was born in Brooklyn, New York City , to a family that was "mostly Irish, despite
4416-621: The air, cacophony—I mean, just screaming and yelling, sirens, strobe lights, the whole spaghetti." The next day, he was arrested and later released on his own recognizance for having thrown a heavy object at a police officer. City records show he was charged with felony assault in the second degree and pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of harassment, classified in 1969 as a violation under PL 240.25. In 2000, he performed at Blind Willie's in Atlanta , speaking fondly of his impending return to Greenwich Village. He reminisced over tunes like "You've Been
4512-399: The blues style to Greenwich Village during the 1960s, while introducing the folk music world to the complex harmonies of Kurt Weill with his many Brecht and Weill interpretations. A traditional revivalist who moved with the times, Van Ronk brought old blues and ballads together with the new sounds of Dylan, Mitchell and Leonard Cohen . Dylan says of his impact: "I'd heard Van Ronk back in
4608-465: The classical suite was based upon stylised folk-dances, and Joseph Haydn 's use of folk melodies is noted. But the emergence of the term "folk" coincided with an "outburst of national feeling all over Europe" that was particularly strong at the edges of Europe, where national identity was most asserted. Nationalist composers emerged in Central Europe, Russia, Scandinavia, Spain and Britain:
4704-422: The complex rhythms of the drum beat. This drum beat may seem simple on the first hearing but it takes a long time to master the intricate rhythms and variations, which the drummer sometimes can bring to a crescendo of intensity. There are six common types of drums falling within 3 styles (one-faced, two-faced, and flat-faced): Other instruments include: Felt Forum The Theater at Madison Square Garden
4800-485: The democratic socialist government of Chile and to aid refugees from the U.S.-backed military junta led by Augusto Pinochet . After Ochs's suicide in 1976, Van Ronk joined the many performers who played at his memorial concert in the Felt Forum at Madison Square Garden , playing his bluesy version of the traditional folk ballad " He Was A Friend Of Mine ". Although Van Ronk was less politically active in later years, he remained committed to anarchist and socialist ideals and
4896-748: The early 1990s, at the behest of former MSG President Bob Gutkowski, the theater was renamed the Paramount Theater after the Paramount Theatre in Times Square had been converted to an office tower. The theater received its next name, The Theater at Madison Square Garden , in the mid-1990s, after Viacom bought Paramount and sold the MSG properties. In 2007, the theater was renamed the WaMu Theater at Madison Square Garden through
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#17327879831644992-546: The elements of nature, and have been enjoyed and developed in the Buddhist environment. The music is of several types and uses only a few types of instruments. The folk songs and poems were used in social gatherings to work together. The Indian influenced classical music has grown to be unique. The traditional drama, music and songs of Sinhala Light Music are typically Sri Lankan. The temple paintings and carvings feature birds, elephants, wild animals, flowers, and trees, and
5088-481: The end of the 1930s these and others had turned American folk music into a social movement. Sometimes folk musicians became scholars and advocates themselves. For example, Jean Ritchie (1922–2015) was the youngest child of a large family from Viper, Kentucky that had preserved many of the old Appalachian traditional songs. Ritchie, living in a time when the Appalachians had opened up to outside influence,
5184-399: The laborers who sing them to coordinate their efforts in accordance with the rhythms of the songs. They are frequently, but not invariably, composed. In the American armed forces , a lively oral tradition preserves jody calls ("Duckworth chants") which are sung while soldiers are on the march. Professional sailors made similar use of a large body of sea shanties . Love poetry , often of
5280-563: The last 20 years of his life working on an Interactive Multimedia educational computer project he called the Global Jukebox , which included 5,000 hours of sound recordings, 400,000 feet of film, 3,000 videotapes , and 5,000 photographs. As of March 2012, this has been accomplished. Approximately 17,400 of Lomax's recordings from 1946 and later have been made available free online. This material from Alan Lomax's independent archive, begun in 1946, which has been digitized and offered by
5376-408: The loss of traditional music is slowed in nations or regions where traditional folk music is a badge of cultural or national identity. Much of what is known about folk music prior to the development of audio recording technology in the 19th century comes from fieldwork and writings of scholars, collectors and proponents. Starting in the 19th century, academics and amateur scholars, taking note of
5472-456: The main Madison Square Garden arena, the theater has a relatively low 20-foot (6.1 m) ceiling at stage level. All of its seating except for boxes on the two side walls is on one level slanted back from the stage. There is an 8,000-square-foot (740 m ) lobby at the theater. It was the host for Mike Tyson 's fourteenth professional fight against Sammy Scaff on December 6, 1985. The theater occasionally hosts boxing matches on nights when
5568-593: The main arena is unavailable, or fights between promising boxers who management believe will not fill up "the big room". Notable fights include Sergio Martínez vs. Matthew Macklin in 2012, Vasiliy Lomachenko vs. Guillermo Rigondeaux in 2017, and Teófimo López vs. George Kambosos Jr. in 2021. There were many concerts performed at the Felt Forum: in 1971, the Grateful Dead (along with the New RIders of
5664-457: The modern movie Songcatcher . One strong theme amongst folk scholars in the early decades of the 20th century was regionalism , the analysis of the diversity of folk music (and related cultures) based on regions of the US rather than based on a given song's historical roots. Later, a dynamic of class and circumstances was added to this. The most prominent regionalists were literary figures with
5760-567: The music of Dvořák , Smetana , Grieg , Rimsky-Korsakov , Brahms , Liszt , de Falla , Wagner , Sibelius , Vaughan Williams , Bartók , and many others drew upon folk melodies. While the loss of traditional folk music in the face of the rise of popular music is a worldwide phenomenon, it is not one occurring at a uniform rate throughout the world. The process is most advanced "where industrialization and commercialisation of culture are most advanced" but also occurs more gradually even in settings of lower technological advancement. However,
5856-591: The musical traditions being lost, initiated various efforts to preserve 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 ), some of which predated the 16th century. Contemporaneously with Child, the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould and later Cecil Sharp worked to preserve
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#17327879831645952-408: The offices of traditional music collectors Robert Winslow Gordon , Alan Lomax and others to capture as much North American field material as possible. John Lomax (the father of Alan Lomax) was the first prominent scholar to study distinctly American folk music such as that of cowboys and southern blacks. His first major published work was in 1911, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads . and
6048-705: The other. In the proliferation of popular music genres, some traditional folk music became also referred to as " World music " or "Roots music". The English term " folklore ", to describe traditional folk music and dance, entered the vocabulary of many continental European nations, each of which had its folk-song collectors and revivalists. The distinction between "authentic" folk and national and popular song in general has always been loose, particularly in America and Germany – for example, popular songwriters such as Stephen Foster could be termed "folk" in America. The International Folk Music Council definition allows that
6144-805: The outcomes of battles or lament 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 traditions; these laments keep alive the cause for which the battle was fought. The narratives of traditional songs often also remember folk heroes such as John Henry or Robin Hood . Some traditional song narratives recall supernatural events or mysterious deaths. Hymns and other forms of religious music are often of traditional and unknown origin. Western musical notation
6240-449: The pace of many activities such as planting , weeding , reaping , threshing , weaving , and milling . In leisure time , singing and playing musical instruments were common forms of entertainment and history-telling—even more common than today when electrically enabled technologies and widespread literacy make other forms of entertainment and information-sharing competitive. Some believe that folk music originated as art music that
6336-400: The preservation of songs as artifacts of deceased cultures. "Functional" folklorists (e.g. Botkin and Alan Lomax) maintained that songs only retain relevance when used by those cultures which retain the traditions which birthed those songs. "Left-wing" folk revivalists (e.g. Charles Seeger and Lawrence Gellert) emphasized music's role "in 'people's' struggles for social and political rights". By
6432-639: The song "Mirror Door" by the Who in 2006 on the album Endless Wire . In 2004, a section of Sheridan Square , where Barrow Street meets Washington Place, was renamed Dave Van Ronk Street in his memory. Van Ronk was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously by the World Folk Music Association in 2004. Joni Mitchell said that Van Ronk's rendition of her song " Both Sides Now " (which he called "Clouds")
6528-471: The songs they hear. For example, around 1970 the song Mullā Mohammed Jān spread from Herat to the rest of Afghanistan , and Iran where it was recorded. Due to its repetitive refrain and the predictability of the second half of each verse, it allowed for both its popularization, and for each singer to create their own version of the song without being overly-concerned for a melody or restrictive poetic rhythm. Because variants proliferate naturally, there
6624-497: The southern Yangtze area. Jiangnan Sizhu (silk and bamboo music from Jiangnan ) is a style of instrumental music, often played by amateur musicians in tea houses in Shanghai. Guangdong Music or Cantonese Music is instrumental music from Guangzhou and surrounding areas. The music from this region influenced Yueju (Cantonese Opera) music, which would later grow popular during the self-described "Golden Age" of China under
6720-643: The sponsorship of the Washington Post , the festival was held in Washington, DC at Constitution Hall from 1937 to 1942. The folk music movement, festivals, and the wartime effort were seen as forces for social goods such as democracy, cultural pluralism, and the removal of culture and race-based barriers. The American folk music revivalists of the 1930s approached folk music in different ways. Three primary schools of thought emerged: "Traditionalists" (e.g. Sarah Gertrude Knott and John Lomax ) emphasized
6816-565: The term "folk music": newly composed songs, fixed in form and by known authors, which imitated some form of traditional music. The popularity of "contemporary folk" recordings caused the appearance of the category "Folk" in the Grammy Awards of 1959; in 1970 the term was dropped in favor of "Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording (including Traditional Blues)", while 1987 brought a distinction between "Best Traditional Folk Recording" and "Best Contemporary Folk Recording". After that, they had
6912-490: The term can also apply to music that, "...has originated with an individual composer and has subsequently been absorbed into the unwritten, living tradition of a community. But the term does not cover a song, dance, or tune that has been taken over ready-made and remains unchanged." The post– World War II folk revival in America and in Britain started a new genre, Contemporary Folk Music , and brought an additional meaning to
7008-602: The term folk music should be used. Folk music may tend to have certain characteristics but it cannot clearly be differentiated in purely musical terms. One meaning often given is that of "old songs, with no known composers," another is that of music that has been submitted to an evolutionary "process of oral transmission ... the fashioning and re-fashioning of the music by the community that give it its folk character." Such definitions depend upon "(cultural) processes rather than abstract musical types...", upon " continuity and oral transmission ...seen as characterizing one side of
7104-947: The texts of 217,996 Latvian folk songs, the Latvju dainas . In Norway the work of collectors such as Ludvig Mathias Lindeman was extensively used by Edvard Grieg in his Lyric Pieces for piano and in other works, which became immensely popular. Around this time, composers of classical music developed a strong interest in collecting traditional songs, and a number of composers carried out their own field work on traditional music. These included Percy Grainger and Ralph Vaughan Williams in England and Béla Bartók in Hungary. These composers, like many of their predecessors, both made arrangements of folk songs and incorporated traditional material into original classical compositions. The advent of audio recording technology provided folklorists with
7200-438: The theater for a limited engagement. The first-ever mixed martial arts event held at the theater was World Series of Fighting 34: Gaethje vs. Firmino on December 31, 2016. The first darts event held at the theater was the 2022 US Darts Masters . In 2021, the theater hosted two Verzuz hip-hop battles : The Lox against DipSet and Fat Joe against Ja Rule . The theater hosted its first Esports event in 2022 with
7296-517: The theater on November 16, 2016. Lucha Libre AAA and Impact Wrestling hosted Lucha Invades NY on September 15, 2019. An annual staging of The Wizard of Oz played at the theater from 1997 to 1999. Notable actors in the musical included Roseanne Barr , Eartha Kitt , and Jo Anne Worley as the Wicked Witch of the West; Mickey Rooney as the Wizard, and Ken Page and Lara Teeter as
7392-530: The then-known variations of both the texts and tunes associated with what came to be known as the Child Canon. He also advanced some significant theories concerning the workings of oral-aural tradition. Similar activity was also under way in other countries. One of the most extensive was perhaps the work done in Riga by Krisjanis Barons , who between the years 1894 and 1915 published six volumes that included
7488-484: The town. Folk music was already, "...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)," particularly in "a community uninfluenced by art music" and by commercial and printed song. Lloyd rejected this in favor of a simple distinction of economic class yet for him, true folk music was, in Charles Seeger 's words, "associated with
7584-478: The traditional 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, repetitive elements, and their frequent in medias res plot developments. Other forms of traditional narrative verse relate
7680-658: The twenty-first century many cherished Chinese folk songs have been inscribed in the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity . In the process, songs once seen as vulgar are now being reconstructed as romantic courtship songs. Regional song competitions, popular in many communities, have promoted professional folk singing as a career, with some individual folk singers having gained national prominence. The art, music and dance of Sri Lanka derive from
7776-526: The uncultured classes". The term further derives from the German expression Volk , in the sense of "the people as a whole" as applied to popular and national music by Johann Gottfried Herder and the German Romantics over half a century earlier. Though it is understood that folk music is the music of the people, observers find a more precise definition to be elusive. Some do not even agree that
7872-421: The work of earlier artists and his folk revival peers. He became noted both for his large physical stature and for his expansive charisma which bespoke an intellectual, cultured gentleman of diverse talents. Among his many interests were cooking, science fiction (he was active for some time in science fiction fandom , referring to it as "mind rot", contributing to fanzines ), world history, and politics. During
7968-568: The worst way ... and we did!" But the trad jazz revival had already passed its prime, and Van Ronk turned to performing the blues he had stumbled across while shopping for jazz 78s by artists like the Reverend Gary Davis , Furry Lewis and Mississippi John Hurt . By about 1958, he was firmly committed to the folk-blues style, accompanying himself with his own acoustic guitar. He performed blues , jazz and folk music , occasionally writing his own songs but generally arranging
8064-400: Was [Dylan]'s first New York guru. Van Ronk was a walking museum of the blues. Through an early interest in jazz, he had gravitated toward black music—its jazz pole, its jug-band and ragtime center, its blues bedrock.... His manner was rough and testy, disguising a warm, sensitive core." For an in depth, illustrated discography, see https://www.wirz.de/music/vanronk.htm Van Ronk was author of
8160-601: Was a dues-paying member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) almost until his death. Van Ronk was among 13 people arrested at the Stonewall Inn June 28, 1969, the night of the Stonewall Riots , which is widely credited as the spark of the contemporary gay rights movement. He had been dining at a neighboring restaurant and joined the riot against the police occupation of the club and
8256-478: Was a widely admired avuncular figure in the Village, presiding over the coffeehouse folk culture and acting as a friend to many up-and-coming artists by inspiring, assisting, and promoting them. Folk performers he befriended include Jim and Jean , Bob Dylan , Tom Paxton , Patrick Sky , Phil Ochs , Ramblin' Jack Elliott , and Joni Mitchell . Dylan recorded Van Ronk's arrangement of the traditional song " House of
8352-538: Was arguably the most prominent US folk music scholar of his time, notably during the beginnings of the folk music revival in the 1930s and early 1940s. Cecil Sharp also worked in America, recording the traditional songs of the Appalachian Mountains in 1916–1918 in collaboration with Maud Karpeles and Olive Dame Campbell and is considered the first major scholar covering American folk music. Campbell and Sharp are represented under other names by actors in
8448-424: Was changed and probably debased by oral transmission while reflecting the character of the society that produced it. In many societies, especially preliterate ones, the cultural transmission of folk music requires learning by ear , although notation has evolved in some cultures. Different cultures may have different notions concerning a division between "folk" music on the one hand and of "art" and "court" music on
8544-423: Was dragged from the crowd into the building by police deputy inspector Seymour Pine . The police slapped and punched Van Ronk to the point of near unconsciousness, handcuffed him to a radiator near the doorway, and decided to charge him for assault. Recalling the expanding riot, Van Ronk said, "There were more people out there [outside the building] when I came out than when I went in. Things were still flying through
8640-511: Was frequently seen on stage next to him in his early days. Critic Robert Shelton described Van Ronk as "the musical mayor of MacDougal Street" - ..."a tall, garrulous, hairy man of three quarters, or, more accurately, three fifths Irish descent. Topped by light brownish hair and a leonine beard which he smoothed down several times a minute, he resembled an unmade bed strewn with books, record jackets, pipes, empty whiskey bottles, lines from obscure poets, finger picks, and broken guitar strings. He
8736-465: Was her favorite version of the song. Van Ronk refused for many years to fly and never learned to drive (he took trains or buses or, when possible, recruited a girlfriend or young musician as his driver), and he declined to ever move from Greenwich Village for any extended period of time (having stayed in California for a short time in the 1960s). Van Ronk's trademark stoneware jug of Tullamore Dew
8832-405: Was not possible. Music was made by common people during both their work and leisure, as well as during religious activities. The work of economic production was often manual and communal. Manual labor often included singing by the workers, which served several practical purposes. It reduced the boredom of repetitive tasks, it kept the rhythm during synchronized pushes and pulls, and it set
8928-411: Was originally created to preserve the lines of Gregorian chant , which before its invention was taught as an oral tradition in monastic communities. Traditional songs such as Green grow the rushes, O present religious lore in a mnemonic form, as do Western Christmas carols and similar traditional songs. Work songs frequently feature call and response structures and are designed to enable
9024-473: Was the Reverend Gary Davis , who conceived the guitar as "a piano around his neck." Van Ronk took this pianistic approach and added a harmonic sophistication adapted from the band voicings of Jelly Roll Morton and Duke Ellington . Van Ronk was among the first to adapt traditional jazz and ragtime to the solo acoustic guitar with arrangements of such ragtime staples as "St. Louis Tickle", " The Entertainer ", "The Pearls" and " Maple Leaf Rag ". Van Ronk brought
9120-737: Was the home of the NFL draft from 1995 until 2004. In 2005, the NFL Draft moved to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center , after MSG management opposed a new stadium for the New York Jets . It also hosted the NBA draft from 2001 to 2010. From 2004 to 2006 and in 2008 Theatre of MSG hosted the Jammy Award honoring improvisational music. In 2013, A Christmas Story: The Musical was revived at
9216-499: 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. In January 2012, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress , with the Association for Cultural Equity, announced that they would release Lomax's vast archive of 1946 and later recording in digital form. Lomax spent
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