It seems that everyone knows about folk music and everyone has listened to it at least once, but when people are asked what exactly they believe to be folk music, there appears a problem: there is no actual definition of folk music, and for different people there seem to be different perceptions of folk music.
Let us analyze how the dictionaries describe the term "folk music". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Fourth Edition) states that there are two perceptions of folk music: 1) Music originating among the common people of a nation or region and spread about or passed down orally, often with considerable variation; 2) Contemporary music in the style of traditional folk music.
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition also speaks about two different phenomenon that are called "folk music":
1) a kind of music originating from the ordinary people of a region or nation and continued by oral tradition; the ballad is a typical form of folk music.
2) Music is also called "folk" when it is made by artists and composers who are inspired by, or imitate, true folk music. Composers such as Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie are folk musicians of the second kind.
An online dictionary WordNet 1.7.1 gives us one meaning of the word combination "folk music": the traditional and typically anonymous music that is an expression of the life of people in a community.
I also want to illustrate the term "folk music" with different definitions used by ordinary people when they were asked to explain their understanding of what can be considered folk music.
1. Music that has no known author
2. Songs that were passed through generations orally, without being written
3. Songs and music that no one owns, or those songs that have entered the "public domain"
4. Songs known by most people in the country or in a particular region
5. Songs everyone's parents and grandparents know.
6. Music that is related to a certain cultural group
7. Songs played live on the instruments considered traditional
8. Songs that most people in a certain region can play and sing
9. Songs played non-professionally
10. Music reflecting the problems of ordinary working people
11. Different ballads, songs related to political or social situation and the songs where content and lyrics are the most important
One can make a conclusion out of the results of such "survey" that one of the most important things about folk music is that it is constantly changing, corresponding to the demands of time - but at the same time folk music always reflects the problems, interests and culture of simple working people [3, p.25], folk culture answers immediately to any social or political changes, and also relates to the values of the time in any case.
In my opinion, there are three main types of folk music that are developing nowadays in America: they are the so-called "second wave" folk music (1), combination of folk music with other different styles of contemporary music (2), and the last genre is the attempt to revive original folk music (3). I want to describe each of these genres separately, and trace the history of each existing type of folk music.
First of all it is important to mention that in modern society folk music in the old understanding is practically absent. Under the term "original folk music" I mean the songs that have been played by most people in the community and were passed from generation to generation orally as an important part of the culture. Such songs had a very significant cultural as well as social meaning; they helped young children to adapt to the society, and contained a lot of important social values, and in addition to that, folk songs of old times were of great fun to sing and were a very popular entertainment. With the development of television, radio and music recording industry the necessity and interest to pass the songs orally disappeared; and today scientists witness that even the musical ability of people nowadays is considerably less than it used to be, for example, a hundred years ago. So what we call "folk music" now reflects in fact the derivatives of the original folk songs [1, p. 139].
The first mentioned type, the one that I called "second-wave folk music" actually represents modern popular music writers and singers, which create their songs being inspired by the original folk music. This genre is represented by such artists as Woody Guthrie, who sang songs that his mother taught him in the childhood; Guthrie was singing the original folk songs and also created own songs, which he also used in his repertoire; the other well-known person, who composed folk songs in the middle of 20-th century, was Pete Seeger; later, with the development of music recording were the Weavers (Seeger's group) and the Kingston Trio. A lot of work has been done by the follower of Guthrie, Jack Elliott, and his disciple Bob Dylan; they have inspired life to many almost forgotten folk songs and made a great deal of research work for their recordings; sometimes they changed the sound of a particular song, for example added some modern instruments, made the rhythm faster etc. This is why I believe these singers belong to the first type of modern folk music [1, p. 152].
The second type of contemporary folk music is he combination of folk music with different new music styles; or, in other words, the music that plays the role of folk music to this generation. The examples of such music can be the combination of folk music songs with electric guitars, drum kit, or rhythmic syncopation usual for popular music but which wasn't natural for the original song. There have appeared a lot of styles representing this mixture of styles: contemporary country music (derived from American folklore but has significantly changed nowadays), rap music (it is also very different from the African-American original folk songs, but serves the same purpose as original rap songs did), and contemporary bluegrass. The most known artists representing the above-mentioned genres of folk music: Steve Goodman, Cheryl Wheeler, John Prine, Bill Morrisey, Christine Lavin.
One of the most popular transformations of folk music is also folk rock, represented by such singers as The Byrds, Simon and Garfunkel, The Mamas and the Papas, Ani Difranco etc. Such branches of folk music as national motives (Celtic, Scottish, Irish, even Breton and Galician music) are also combined with modern styles and rhythms, and represent the second folk music type.
And finally the last genre of folk music: the so-called "purists" or those who vote for preserving the traditions of original folk music and usually stay against the first two types of folk music because of the changes made by popular singers to original folk songs. Within this genre, there exists a tendency to play the "traditional" musical instruments and sing live, without special equipment and modern musical instruments; also the supporters of this folk music type are willing to return the traditions of folk music to the society; one of the successful attempts of such kind has been the suggestion of Cecil Sharp to have English folk songs to be taught to schoolchildren. In general, the representatives of this type of music usually have more political and social than purely musical interests and are concerned about the cultural meaning of folk traditions.
Conclusion. Folk songs are important both musically and historically as they define some part of a people's experience and become a part of a people's culture. The development of folk traditions in some way reflects the transformation of social values and in my opinion, preserving and developing folk traditions is very important for the whole nation.
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