Folk Music

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture by Douglas Cooke

Before the twentieth century, a dichotomy prevailed between cultivated music, by educated, formally trained musicians and composers, and folk music, performed by everyone else. Cultivated music was created by and for the upper classes, and was taught and transmitted within a written tradition, while folk music was created by and for the lower classes, and was transmitted orally. Since folk songs were remembered rather than written down, they changed over time--sometimes gradually over centuries, sometimes all at once at the hands of a particularly innovative interpreter. The changes might be accidental, resulting from a lapse of memory, or a deliberate improvement. This communal re-creation is one of the defining characteristics of folk music. The songs and variation belonged to the whole community and were not associated with specific individuals. The names of great classical composers were transmitted in the written tradition along with their compositions, but traditional folk songs are anonymous. Cultivated music had to please the wealthy patron who paid the composer, but a folk song had to appeal to the entire community in order to survive over generations. Thus cultivated music was aristocratic and folk music was communal. Each reflected its audience's values. Cultivated music was often quite complex and required specialized musicians who were hired to perform it, whereas folk songs remained simple, so that anyone could memorize, sing, or play them.

One innovation which compromised the oral nature of folk music was the broadside. Broadsides were lyrics printed on large sheets of paper and sold at the marketplace. There was often an instruction to sing the lyrics to the tune of a well-established song. This introduced a degree of literacy to folk music, and many "broadside ballads" exhibit literary qualities. But the major change that permanently affected folk music was the advent of mass media. Records, movies, radio, and television all gave rise to popular music accessible to everyone from coast to coast. Individuals were able to become rich, or at least make a living, by performing music which appealed to millions of people. This has caused difficulty for musicologists in defining folk music. Popularity itself does not disqualify a song as folk music, but some musicologists claim that it ceases to be folk when it conforms to mainstream styles and tastes. In the latter half of the twentieth century there are very few communities unaffected by mainstream culture (with the exception of isolationist communities like the Amish). One may be immersed in one's own regional or ethnic tradition, but hardly anyone is completely sheltered from mass media. Consequently, individual traditions have shed their particularities and conformed to mainstream tastes. Folk has given way to folk rock and folk pop. The same can be said of blues, bluegrass, and country. These were originally types of folk music which have been popularized into mainstream genres.

American folk music is among the richest and most variegated in the world, owing to the many ethnic groups that make up the American people. The major strains of American folk music are Irish, Scottish, English, and African. Other European traditions, notably Spanish, have also exerted some influence. The American Indians have a rich musical heritage, but it was never integrated with the European or African traditions. Some instruments of American folk music are the guitar, string bass, mandolin, autoharp, dulcimer, fiddle, and banjo.

The most intriguing genre of the American folk song is the ballad, a song which tells a story. The earliest American ballads came from the British Isles and thrived for centuries in Appalachian areas. Ballads can often be traced to mythic or epic traditions. "Polly Vaughan" (Peter, Paul and Mary) can be traced back to Celtic mythology. (Note: in this discussion, examples of ballads will be followed by popular performers who have recorded the song. More traditional versions of many of these ballads may be explored in Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads.) "Polly Vaughan" tells the story of a hunter who accidentally kills his wife, having mistaken her for a swan. The story has a supernatural element: in some versions Polly is resurrected as a swan; in others her ghost visits the courtroom where her husband is tried. "John Riley" (Joan Baez, the Byrds) tells of a man who, returning from a seven-year expedition, disguises himself from his wife to find out if she has been faithful. John Riley has obvious parallels with the Greek Odysseus. Many ballads derive from the Biblical tradition, as in "Samson and Delilah," also called "If I Had My Way" (Grateful Dead, Peter, Paul and Mary).

Although there are some comic ballads, most ballads are tragic and have a tone of inevitability which exerts a strange power over the listener. Many tell of the hero's ruin and seek to deter the listeners from a similar fate by delivering a moral at the end. "The House of the Rising Sun" (Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Odetta, the Animals), tells the tragic tale of a woman lured into prostitution and warns the listener "not to do what I have done." The fidelity of women is a common theme, as in "John Riley" mentioned above, and "Gallows Tree," also called "Hangman" (Peter, Paul and Mary, Odetta), which tells of a man at the gallows abandoned by father, mother, and brother, until his true love finally comes to pay his fee (a very different version of this song is recorded by Led Zeppelin as "Gallows Pole"). The infidelity of men is an equally common motif, as in "Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies," also known as "Tiny Sparrow" (Peter, Paul and Mary).