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108-500: The Imagined Village is a folk music project founded by Simon Emmerson of Afro Celt Sound System . It is intended to produce modern folk music that represented modern multiculturalism in the United Kingdom and as such, featured musicians from a wide variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The name of the project came from the 1993 book The Imagined Village by Georgina Boyes . The project started in 2004, and led to

216-482: 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

324-619: 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

432-474: A tune is a short instrumental piece , 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

540-512: 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

648-619: A band featuring Simon Emmerson , Johnny Kalsi , Francis Hylton , Andy Gangadeen , Sheema Mukherjee and Barney Morse Brown . They also appeared on Later with Jools Holland . A revised lineup was announced for their 2010 tour, coinciding with the release of Empire & Love : Martin Carthy, Eliza Carthy, and Chris Wood, backed by a band featuring Simon Emmerson, Johnny Kalsi, Ali Friend , Andy Gangadeen, Simon Richmond , Sheema Mukherjee and Barney Morse Brown. In 2011 Jackie Oates replaced Chris Wood for their live performances including at

756-401: 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

864-560: A folk rock and indie folk band was formed in 2007 and achieved prominence in 2010. Shenandoah Run formed in 2011 to bring contemporary American folk music of the 1960s to modern listeners. Filk music can be considered folk music stylistically and culturally (though the 'community' it arose from, science fiction fandom , is an unusual and thoroughly modern one). Neofolk began in the 1980s, fusing traditional European folk music with post-industrial music , historical topics, philosophical commentary, traditional songs and paganism . The genre

972-445: A folk/pop blend. The mid to late Sixties saw the development of British folk rock , with a focus on indigenous (European, and, emblematically, English) songs. A key British folk rock moment was the release of Fairport Convention 's album Liege and Lief . Guitarist Richard Thompson declared that the music of the band demanded a corresponding "English Electric" style, while bassist Ashley Hutchings formed Steeleye Span to pursue

1080-420: A genre label is a rather nebulous one, but one that has been employed often at least since the mid-1970s. For dedicated enthusiasts, the category largely includes the works of contemplative post- Dylan singer-songwriters, who were influenced by his and other late 1960s' and 1970s' artists' country rock sounds, but who, recording slightly later, preferred a gentler, more acoustic-dominant sound that allowed focus on

1188-587: 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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1296-549: 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 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

1404-532: A more traditional repertoire performed in the folk rock style. Following his own departure from the group, Thompson and his wife Linda released six albums as a duo which integrated folk rock and art rock . Fairport Convention, Pentangle , Alan Stivell and Mr. Fox 's work included electrification of traditional musical forms. Starting in the 1970s, folk music was fueled by new singer-songwriters such as Steve Goodman , John Prine , Emmylou Harris , Joni Mitchell , John Denver , Harry Chapin , and many more. In

1512-404: 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

1620-695: 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

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

1836-553: 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

1944-479: A simple distinction of economic class yet for him, true folk music was, in Charles Seeger 's words, "associated with 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

2052-491: A subgenre of country is inaccurate, as it is not aimed at a country music audience, in the main. Some of the definitive country folk artists from the early years include Harry McClintock , John Prine , Kate Wolf , and Nanci Griffith —all singer-songwriters with thoughtful lyrics whose arrangements are backed by the aforementioned instruments. By the 1980s, record labels such as Rounder and Sugar Hill specialized in recording country folk artists The category does overlap with

2160-567: 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,

2268-434: 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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2376-404: A wide variety of traditions, including in many cases instruments such as fiddles , tin whistles , accordions and bagpipes . Folk metal often favours pagan -inspired themes. Viking metal is defined in its folk stance, incorporating folk interludes into albums (e.g., Bergtatt and Kveldssanger , the first two albums by once-folk metal, now- experimental band Ulver ). Mumford & Sons

2484-590: Is a Star by Ultramarine is credited as a progenitor of the new music; it featured a pastoral sound and incorporated traditional instruments such as violin and harmonica with techno and house elements. According to The Sunday Times Culture's Encyclopedia of Modern Music , essential albums of the genre are Four Tet 's Pause (2001), Tunng 's Mother's Daughter and Other Songs (2005), and Caribou 's The Milk of Human Kindness (2005). More "worldbeat" influenced electronic folk acts include Bryn Jones with his project Muslimgauze (before his death in 1999),

2592-408: 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

2700-469: Is considered to be a separate genre. One of the earliest figures in this revival was Woody Guthrie, who sang traditional songs in the 1930s and 1940s as well as composing his own. Among Guthrie's friends and followers as a collector, performer, and composer was Pete Seeger . Notable figures of the American folk revival include Elizabeth Cotten and Odetta . Cotten, a guitar and banjo player who developed

2808-530: 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

2916-528: Is largely European but it also influences other regions. Pagan Folk music is prominent in Germany, the United Kingdom, Scandinavian countries and Slavic countries with singers like David Smith (Aka Damh the bard) and Bands like Danheim , Faun , Omnia , Wardruna and Arkona . Most bands join the folk genre with other musical genres like metal or electronica . Anti folk began in New York City in

3024-529: Is reflected in her music. Both Cotten and Odetta performed at the first Newport Folk Festival . In the 1930s, Jimmie Rodgers , in the 1940s Burl Ives , in the early 1950s Seeger's group the Weavers and Harry Belafonte , and in the late 1950s the Kingston Trio as well as other professional, commercial groups became popular. Some who defined commercialization as the beginning of this phase consider

3132-486: 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 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

3240-639: Is taken to mean all music that is called folk that is not traditional folk music , but rather, a set of genres that began with and then evolved from the folk revival of the mid-20th century. According to musician and singer-songwriter Hugh Blumenfeld , for the American folk scene, "it's not just about the music. The definitions are political, social, and economic as well as aesthetic. But if it can't be defined, we can at least describe what people who consider themselves folk music fans generally listen to." Though he considers folk music to be difficult to define, Blumenfeld lists some observed consistencies: Beginning in

3348-402: 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

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3456-616: 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

3564-475: 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 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 ...

3672-405: Is used just for a special modern genre (the traditional folk is called folklore or national music). The Czech folk music is influenced by Czech traditional music an songwriters, "tramping" music , as well as by English-language country and contemporary-folk music, spirituals and traditionals, bluegrass , chanson etc. In the second half of the 20th century, all the similar genres coexisted as

3780-995: The American Civil Rights Movement and anti-war causes associated with the Vietnam War . Songs like Dylan's " Blowin' in the Wind " became an anthem for the civil rights movement, and he sang ballads about many other current issues of the time, such as "Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" about the Cuban missile crisis. Dylan is quoted having said "there's other things in this world besides love and sex that're important, too." A number of performers who had begun their careers singing largely traditional material, as typified by Joan Baez and Judy Collins, began to write their own material. The Canadian performers Gordon Lightfoot , Leonard Cohen , Bruce Cockburn and Joni Mitchell represented such fusions and enjoyed great popularity in

3888-474: 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

3996-752: 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 ),

4104-458: The Romantic nationalism of the first folk revival had its greatest influence on art music , the "second folk revival" of the later 20th century brought a new genre of popular music with artists marketed through concerts, recordings and broadcasting. One of the earliest figures in this revival was Woody Guthrie , who sang traditional songs in the 1930s and 1940s as well as composing his own. In

4212-533: The Shrewsbury Folk Festival . The musicians credited on Bending the Dark (2012) were Eliza Carthy, Martin Carthy, Simon Emmerson, Ali Friend, Andy Gangadeen, Johnny Kalsi, Sheema Mukherjee, Barney Morse Brown, Jackie Oates and Simon Richmond. Folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during

4320-481: 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

4428-529: The UK , the folk revival fostered a generation of singer-songwriters such as Donovan , who achieved initial prominence in the 1960s. The folk revival spawned Canada 's first folk wave of internationally successful artists such as Gordon Lightfoot , Leonard Cohen , Joni Mitchell , and Buffy Sainte-Marie . Major performers who emerged from the 1940s to the early 1960s included Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger , Phil Ochs , Joan Baez , and Bob Dylan . The mid-1960s through

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4536-534: The United Kingdom , the folk revival fostered young artists like the Watersons , Martin Carthy and Roy Bailey and a generation of singer-songwriters such as Bert Jansch , Ralph McTell , Donovan and Roy Harper ; all seven achieved initial prominence in the 1960s. Bob Dylan , Paul Simon and Tom Paxton visited Britain for some time in the early 1960s, the first two especially making later use of

4644-439: 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

4752-498: The "Cotten style" of guitar fingerpicking, released her first album, Freight Train and Other North Carolina Folk Songs and Tune, in 1958 with the help of Mike Seeger , which also illuminates the use of guitars tuned to open keys, another common element found in folk music. Odetta, who is known for blending her operatic vocal background with blues and folk songs, was notably active in the Civil Rights Movement , which

4860-489: The 1980s, the Washington Squares played "throwback" folk music. Suzanne Vega performed folk and protest folk-oriented music. The Knitters promulgated cowpunk or folk punk , which eventually evolved into alt country . More recently the same spirit has been embraced and expanded on by artists such as Miranda Stone and Steve Earle . In the second half of the 1990s, once more, folk music made an impact on

4968-1124: The 1980s. Folk punk , known in its early days as rogue folk, is a fusion of folk music and punk rock. It was pioneered by the London-based Irish band the Pogues in the 1980s. Industrial folk music is a characterization of folk music normally referred to under other genres, and covers music of or about industrial environments and topics, including related protest music. Other subgenres include indie folk , progressive folk , folktronica , freak folk and Americana and fusion genres such as folk metal , psychedelic folk , and neofolk . Music mixing elements of folk and electronic music , or " folktronica ", (or "ethnic electronica") that features uses of acoustic instruments with variable influences and choice of sounds. The Ashgate Research Companion to Popular Musicology describes folktronica as "a catch-all [term] for all manner of artists who have combined mechanical dance beats with elements of acoustic rock or folk." The 1993 album Every Man and Woman

5076-430: 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 a people's folklore , or music performed by custom over

5184-432: 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

5292-575: 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) —

5400-577: The British Isles, the Pogues in the early 1980s and Ireland's the Corrs in the 1990s brought traditional tunes back into the album charts. The Corrs were active from 1990 to 2006 and performed Celtic and pop music, and created a blend of the two. Carrie Newcomer emerged with Stone Soup in 1984 and has been performing individually since 1991. Brandi Carlile , Patty Griffin , and Rising Appalachia are popular folk artists c.  2019 . In

5508-713: The Circle (1964–1975) showcased the traditional Irish- and English-derived music of Newfoundland, for example. But by far the most important of these was Don Messer's Jubilee (1957–1973), which helped to bridge the gap between rural country-folk and the folk revival that was emerging from urban coffee shops and folk clubs. The show helped to launch the careers of country-folk singers Stompin' Tom Connors and Catherine McKinnon . The folk revival spawned Canada's first folk wave of internationally successful artists such as Gordon Lightfoot , Leonard Cohen , Ian & Sylvia , Neil Young , Joni Mitchell , and Buffy Sainte-Marie . At

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5616-831: The Mamas & the Papas created new, hard-to-classify music that was folk-inflected and often included in discussions of folk rock. During this period, the term "protest music" was often used to characterize folk music with topical political themes. The convergence of the civil rights movement and folk music on the college campus led to the popularity of artists like Bob Dylan and his brand of protest music. As Folk singers and songwriters such as Phil Ochs , Buffy Sainte-Marie , Arlo Guthrie and Tom Paxton followed in Woody Guthrie's footsteps, writing " protest music " and topical songs and expressing support for various causes including

5724-588: The North American folk revival tended to use "acoustic guitar, harmonica, banjo, mandolin, autoharp, violin, and accordion". While the Romantic nationalism of the folk revival had its greatest influence on art-music, the "second folk revival" of the later 20th century brought a new genre of popular music with artists marketed through concerts, recordings and broadcasting. This is the genre that remains as "contemporary folk music" even when traditional music

5832-541: The Shoulder and Native American), and other country rock inflected recordings ( Tom Rush 's Tom Rush and Merrimack County and Gordon Lightfoot and Jimmy Buffett 's 1970s catalog). None of these were specifically marketed or received as "country folk", however. Still, later low-key, acoustic-dominant country-inflected recordings by these and many other earlier artists have at times loosely, but not inaccurately, been defined as country folk by some sources. More recently,

5940-535: The U.S.; all four were eventually invested with the Order of Canada . Many of the acid rock bands of San Francisco began by playing acoustic folk and blues. The Smothers Brothers television shows featured many folk performers, including the formerly blacklisted Pete Seeger . Bonnie Koloc is a Chicago-based American folk music singer-songwriter who made her recording debut in 1971. In 1968 Melanie , released her first album in 1968 with several popular songs with

6048-494: The UK; it closed in 1991. As the 1950s progressed into the 1960s, the folk revival movement gathered momentum in both Britain and America. In much of rural Canada, traditional and country-folk music were the predominant styles of music until the 1950s, ahead even of the globally popular jazz and swing. Traditional folk took this predominance into early Canadian television with many country-themed shows on its early airwaves. All Around

6156-418: The artists of Asian underground movement ( Cheb i Sabbah , Asian Dub Foundation , Joi , State of Bengal , Transglobal Underground , Natacha Atlas ), Shpongle , Home Sweet Somewhere, Mavka , Ott , Zavoloka , Linda George , Banco de Gaia , AeTopus , Zingaia , Afro-Celt Sound System , Métisse , A Tribe Called Red , Go_A , and some early work by Yat-Kha (with Ivan Sokolovsky ). Country folk as

6264-492: The audience for folk music in those years were part of the working class, and many of these songs expressed resistance to the social order and an anger towards the government. The large musical, political, lifestyle, and counterculture changes most associated with "the 60s" occurred during the second half of the decade and the first year or two of the 1970s. Folk music underwent a related rapid evolution, expansion and diversification at that same time. Major changes occurred through

6372-465: 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:

6480-643: The commercial hit Tom Dooley by the Kingston Trio in 1958 as marking the beginning of this era. In 1963–1964, the ABC television network aired the Hootenanny television series devoted to this brand of folk music and also published the associated magazine ABC-TV Hootenanny . Starting in 1950, the Sing Out! , Broadside , and The Little Sandy Review magazines helped spread both traditional and composed songs, as did folk-revival-oriented record companies. In

6588-403: 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: Contemporary folk music While

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6696-428: The early 1960s were perhaps the zenith of non-fusion folk music prominence in the music scene. During the Great Depression , folk music reflected social realities of poverty and disempowerment of common people through vernacularized lyrics expressing the harsh realities of hard times and poverty. Often newly composed songs in traditional style by writers like Guthrie also featured a humorous and satirical tone. Most of

6804-436: The early 1970s was associated with large musical, political, lifestyle, and counterculture changes. Folk music underwent a related rapid evolution, expansion and diversification at that same time. Major changes occurred through the evolution of established performers such as Bob Dylan , Joan Baez , Judy Collins , and Peter, Paul and Mary , and also through the creation of new fusion genres with rock and pop. During this period,

6912-546: 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

7020-481: 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,

7128-485: The evolution of established performers such as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, the Seekers and Peter Paul and Mary, and also through the creation of new fusion genres with rock and pop. Much of this evolution began in the early 1960s and emerged into prominence in the mid and late 1960s. One performance "crucible" for this evolution was Greenwich Village New York. Dylan's use of electric instruments helped inaugurate

7236-505: 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 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

7344-500: The genres of folk rock and country rock , particularly by his album John Wesley Harding . These changes represented a further departure from traditional folk music. The Byrds with hits such as Seeger's " Turn! Turn! Turn! " were emblematic of a new term folk rock . Barry McGuire left the New Christy Minstrels and recorded " Eve of Destruction " in 1965. Other performers such as Simon & Garfunkel and

7452-562: The gentler sounds of singers such as Iris DeMent , Kate & Anna McGarrigle , and Gillian Welch . Even during the 1970s, as the acoustic, early country music-inflected sounds of country folk were making it distinct from other styles of post-1960s singer-songwriter music, it had varying degrees of overlaps with the sounds of progressive country music (such as Kris Kristofferson , Townes Van Zandt , Guy Clark ), outlaw country ( Billy Joe Shaver , Waylon Jennings , Willie Nelson , Johnny Cash ), progressive bluegrass ( Tony Rice albums Cold on

7560-399: 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

7668-563: 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

7776-408: 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

7884-411: The lyrics. The significant element that distinguishes "country folk" from the "folk" music on Dylan's contemporaries' recordings in the 1960s was the re-admission of country and bluegrass music instrumentation—mandolin, banjo, fiddle, and resophonic and electric steel guitars—into the mix; country rock's success with urban audiences had paved the way for this hybrid. For aficionados, viewing country folk as

7992-528: The mainstream music via a younger generation of artists such as Eliza Carthy , Kate Rusby and Spiers and Boden . Canada's biggest-selling folk group of the 1990s and 2000s was the Celtic, rock-tinged Great Big Sea from Newfoundland, who have had four albums certified platinum in Canada. Folk metal bands such as Korpiklaani , Skyclad , Waylander , Ensiferum , Ithilien and Finntroll meld elements from

8100-410: The majority of artists whose music could be classified as country folk find their home in the americana genre, including Brandi Carlile , Jason Isbell , Parker Millsap , Patty Griffin and Amanda Shires , with several artists being interchangeably described as both folk and americana artists, such as Sarah Jarosz who has received Grammy Awards in both genre categories. In Europe, the term "folk"

8208-457: 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

8316-567: 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,

8424-646: 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

8532-408: 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

8640-705: 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

8748-805: 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

8856-449: 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

8964-714: The post World War II era, folk revivals occurred in Europe, Canada, and the United States, and developed through the 1960s, with the subject matter of this music influenced by the political and social climates of the day. According to The North American Folk Music Revival , "the folk music revival began... as a North Eastern American urban phenomenon, and spread from city to city throughout the entire continent and beyond, to Wester Europe", with "enthusiasts" generally being middle-class university students. While instrumentation of folk music varies across countries and regions, music of

9072-521: The post-country rock trajectories of other artists who moved away from the mainstream market as country rock's own fortunes waned at the close of the 1970s. Emmylou Harris moved into neo-traditionalist country, Chris Hillman into progressive bluegrass, brother harmony duo (with Herb Pedersen ), and Bakersfield revival. By the start of the 1990s, these sounds, as well as others, would inspire musical amalgams categorized as alternative country music and americana , yet "country folk" continues to be used for

9180-400: 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

9288-564: The release of an eponymous album in 2007 by a collective of artists on Real World Records . Some of the tracks on it are modern re-interpretations of traditional folk songs. Benjamin Zephaniah was awarded Best Original Song in the Hancocks 2008, Talkawhile Awards for Folk Music (as voted by members of Talkawhile.co.uk) for " Tam Lyn Retold ". He collected the award at The Cambridge Folk Festival on 2 August 2008. The Imagined Village E.P.

9396-716: The rise of specialized folk festivals (beginning with the Miramichi Folksong Festival in 1958), increased radio airplay on rock, pop, and easy listening radio stations, the introduction of the Juno Award for Folk Artist of the Year in 1971, and even an academic journal the Canadian Folk Music Journal in 1973. The mid- and late 1960s saw fusion forms of folk (such as folk rock) achieve prominence never before seen by folk music, but

9504-514: The same time, Quebec folk singer-songwriters like Gilles Vigneault and groups such as La Bottine Souriante were doing the same in the French-speaking world. English-speaking Canadian folk artists tended to move the United States to pursue larger audiences until the introduction of so-called " Canadian content " rules for radio and television in the 1970s. At the same time, Canadian folk music became more formalized and commercialized with

9612-471: 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

9720-497: 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

9828-643: 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

9936-536: The term folklore , which was coined in 1846 by the English antiquarian William Thoms to describe "the traditions, customs, and superstitions of 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

10044-565: 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

10152-692: The term "protest music" was often used to characterize folk music with topical political themes. The Canadian performers Gordon Lightfoot , Leonard Cohen , Bruce Cockburn and Joni Mitchell represented such fusions and enjoyed great popularity in the U.S. Starting in the 1970s folk music was fueled by new singer-songwriters such as Joni Mitchell , Neil Young , and Harry Chapin . Other subgenres of folk include anti folk , folk punk , indie folk , folktronica , freak folk and Americana and fusion genres such as folk metal , progressive folk , psychedelic folk , and neofolk . Definitions of "contemporary folk music" are generally vague and variable. Here, it

10260-490: 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

10368-526: The term is usually only descriptive, in some cases people use it as the name of a genre. For example, 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,

10476-947: 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

10584-530: 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

10692-509: The traditional English material they heard. In 1950, prominent American folklorist and collector of traditional songs Alan Lomax came to Britain and met A. L. 'Bert' Lloyd and Ewan MacColl , a meeting credited as inaugurating the second British folk revival. In London, the colleagues opened the Ballads and Blues Club, eventually renamed the Singers' Club, possibly the first folk club in

10800-478: 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

10908-658: 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

11016-556: 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 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

11124-538: 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

11232-424: 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

11340-405: 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

11448-411: 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

11556-657: Was released earlier in 2007, and is a remix of the album tracks. The 2008 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards voted "Cold, Hailey, Rainy Night" as best traditional track. In 2009, the project moved to a new record label, ECC Records, and a second album, Empire & Love was released in January 2010, followed by Bending the Dark in May 2012. The Imagined Village live band have toured since November 2007. The original lineup consisted of Billy Bragg , Martin Carthy , Eliza Carthy , Sheila Chandra , Chris Wood and The Young Coppers , backed by

11664-499: 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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