Folk or Folk

[wood&wire]

What chaps my hide is when people call themselves folkies but use electronic gadgets in their acts.

Saw Bon Iver on ACL a coupla years ago and he spent half the time turning little knobs on some electronic device. But the tv guide listing said he was a folk musician. Bait and switch if you ask me.

[Flying Orca]

Originally Posted by wood&wire

What chaps my hide is when people call themselves folkies but use electronic gadgets in their acts.

Saw Bon Iver on ACL a coupla years ago and he spent half the time turning little knobs on some electronic device. But the tv guide listing said he was a folk musician. Bait and switch if you ask me.

Why shouldn't a folk musician - a "musician of the people", literally - avail herself/himself of the latest instrumental technology? One of the finest folk acts I ever enjoyed was called Lights in a Fat City. It featured a guy playing what may very well be the world's oldest trumpet, the didgeridoo, another guy playing percussion, and another guy (Simon Tassano, who was doing live sound for Richard Thompson last time I saw him) on guitar synth and assorted samples and manipulations. Their music was unique, captivating, other-worldly, profoundly moving... and rooted in a folk tradition that is some 40 000 years old.

[Pitar]

To my memory, folk is music written by and for the people of small locales and highly cultural-centric. It's telling of stories of people, places and events as written by simple people for their own culturally-centric origins. It doesn't matter the nation or culture. Blues is folk music originated by black people, for instance. The folk definition has been supplanted with the name Blues.

It's very broad and yet deceptive at the same time. I disdain Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie as folk singers, which they have been labeled. I think they were simply big-mouthed rebel rousers using music to foist their complaints upon any ear that would listen. That's not folk. Folk, again, is the telling of stories that are not politically charged themes the likes of Guthrie's and Seeger's works.

[Chicago Sandy]

To me, “folk” music means any of the following: traditional American and British Isles public domain music no longer attributable to an individual author (i.e., by Anonymous Dead Anglo-Saxons*); the music indigenous to a particular nation or historically longstanding ethnic culture (as opposed to of a contemporary cultural construct such as hippies, punk or rap); and music written by identified individuals, which music employs (primarily) acoustic instruments and sonically and structurally resembles or was inspired by traditional music. Until the 1950s, only the first and second categories were considered “folk.”

I used to advocate a rigid definition (i.e., traditional music and traditionally-inspired music penned by anyone before and including me), but the definition’s been blown wide-open. Used to be that electric bass and any percussion other than handheld or djembe disqualified a song from “folk” airplay and was verboten at Folk Alliance showcases whether formal or private. At this point, the definition seems more analogous to Potter Stewart’s definition of pornography: “I can’t say what it is but I know it when I see it.” (Even more apropos of “Americana”). The only quibble I have now is when rock radio and the Recording Academy call anything with acoustic instruments or harmonies “folk music,” even when it contains electric guitars and is sung and played by rock stars. I love the late Warren Zevon’s album “The Wind,” but I still don’t think it should have won the “Best Contemporary Folk Album” Grammy. Ditto Eddie Vedder’s “”Ukulele Songs” (okay, I didn’t love that one though I love Pearl Jam). And with the Grammy folk categories for contemporary and traditional folk merged into one, as well as various ethnic and regional folk music categories rolled into a single “Regional Roots,” while there are still many categories for various styles of Latin and a separate category for Americana, the definitions have seemed to morph into what the market (via sales) dictates.

*Sorry, that song title’s taken.

[The Bard Rocks]

I'll endorse what Teleman and Glennwillow said, even though the common usage of the word today is quite different (read "songwriter"). True "Folk" music is traditional, passed on by oral tradition (which still exists today) and normally the composer's name is long forgotten. that definition has been around 50, 100... years and I see no reason the change it. Though most everybody else uses it differently today, I bite my tongue and continue to think they are wrong.

[Road-Dog]

Slightly off topic. Silly M, where is your club? I do not know your country, but my friends and I are planning to go to TT Race next year and your place sounds like the kind of club we would like to go to. Are you anywhere near Isle of Man?
We would be riding over from Germany.

[wood&wire]

Originally Posted by Flying Orca

Why shouldn't a folk musician - a "musician of the people", literally - avail herself/himself of the latest instrumental technology? One of the finest folk acts I ever enjoyed was called Lights in a Fat City. It featured a guy playing what may very well be the world's oldest trumpet, the didgeridoo, another guy playing percussion, and another guy (Simon Tassano, who was doing live sound for Richard Thompson last time I saw him) on guitar synth and assorted samples and manipulations. Their music was unique, captivating, other-worldly, profoundly moving... and rooted in a folk tradition that is some 40 000 years old.

Not until Bon Iver incorporates a didgeridoo into his act will I ever call him a folk musician. Not a moment sooner.

[frankhond]

As Bob Dylan sang in that New York City song "...you sound like a hillbilly, we want folk music here."

Apparently distinctions were made back then too.

My observation is that C&W and Bluegrass have evolved to very specific genres that have stepped outside the "folk" umbrella, even though it's folk music too.

Of course, in the end, any music not composed to be exclusively played in the royal court is folk music.

[Flying Orca]

Originally Posted by wood&wire

Not until Bon Iver incorporates a didgeridoo into his act will I ever call him a folk musician. Not a moment sooner.

I'm not familiar with him, but since I think most non-corporate music from punk to pre-corporate rap to garage rock fit my rather loose definition of folk music, we're likely to disagree on the category's boundaries.