It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment I started listening to folk music, but it’s been present in my life for quite some time now. Likewise, it’s difficult to define what folk music even is. There are songs with unknown origins, that have been passed down through generations. They harken back to a time when we relied on the oral tradition: when our voices delivered stories from one person to the next, like an endless game of telephone or hot potato. Because of this, folk is typically seen as a genre of community. It is the people’s music.
And because each person is vastly different from the next, there is an inherent sense of variety in the genre. There is a variety of instruments, albeit most folk music is tied to acoustics (guitar, banjo, etc.), as well as varying themes in folk lyrics. The genre has been used as a sort of social critique, with songs that discuss displacement, wars, and poverty. We can look to Woody Guthrie and Yusuf Islam/Cat Stevens for this.
On the other hand, folk can be extremely personal, focusing on a specific experience instead of a universal one. Josephine Foster draws us into her world in her new surprise album, No Harm Done . Folk can be intertextual as well—a genre based on tales, folk artists don’t shy away from mentioning other stories or building connections through references of names and biblical moments. Leonard Cohen and The Roches encompass this.
Folk can also be seen as the music of the recluse. When I think of the genre, my mind is not filled with images of stadiums, but rather intimate and humble settings. Tiny bar. Cheap instruments. Sorrowful voices. Connie Converse, a musician active in the 50s, left behind her recordings and a simple note to her family, and disappeared. Her songs were only released in 2009, and nobody knows where her story ended up. Folk is the home of messy human mysteries.
Norma Tanega sings, “Come free with me, come and love me, birth the show with me.” Folk music is sharing stories, intimate or universal, and making those connections with one another.
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