The Story of Pop

Folk Scene

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Folk Scene

Folk music is by, and for, the common people. It began in societies, which were not affected by mass communication and the commercialization of culture. It was shared by the entire community and was transmitted by word of mouth. During the 20th century, folk music took on a new meaning. It described a particular kind of popular music, which is culturally descended from, or influenced by, traditional folk music. Apart from instrumental music much of it is vocal and as such, most folk music has meaningful lyrics.

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joanbaez
Bob Dylan
Joan Baez

The capitalist system (the industrial revolution) is responsible for destroying the origional traditional form of folk music. Industrial and technological development meant that music could be packaged and distributed for profit. As technology advanced, succeeding generations became attracted to popular music in ever more accessible and desirable forms. Gramophone records became LPs and then CDs and the music hall gave way to radio and television. With the ever-increasing success of popular music, the musical interests of many people eventually ceased to include any folk music at all. Folk music, however, was still performed in concerts and distributed by recordings and broadcasting. However, as a popular genre it quickly evolved to be quite different from its original roots.

During the 1950s, a folk revival occurred in Britain. A.L.'Bert' Lloyd and Ewan MacColl were performing folk music to the locals in the midlands and when the two colleagues returned to London, they formed the ‘Ballads and Blues Club’. This was the first of what became known as the ‘folk clubs’. As the 1950s progressed into the 1960s, the folk revival movement built up in both Britain and America. This revival began with performers like Woody Guthrie who was a collector of folk music and also composed his own. His popularity rose in the U.S. along with the ‘Hootenanny’ television series and the magazine ‘ABC-TV Hootenanny’ (around 1963–1964). Very soon after, this series was cancelled due to the arrival of the Beatles and the "British invasion", signalling the rise of Folk Rock.

 

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Donavan

 

 

 
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The Melody Man Collection

 

 

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Fairport Convention

Publications helped continue the spread of both traditional and newly composed folk songs, as did folk-revival-oriented record companies. Many popular folk singers maintained an idealistic leftist/progressive political orientation, which  easily identified with the ordinary working people who created it. Because of this, in the 1960s singers such as Joan Baez and Bob Dylan followed in Guthrie's footsteps and began writing "protest music", particularly against the Vietnam War.

In Britain, the folk revival did not create any pop stars but it helped raise the profile of the music and folk clubs sprang up all over the country. It inspired a generation of singer-songwriters, such as Ralph McTell and Donovan. Bob Dylan came to London to see the growing folk scene in the early 1960s, and Paul Simon spent several months there. Folk music did not achieve mass popularity until the electric folk of Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span took old songs and mixed the tunes with rock. Both bands had hit singles and albums that sold well, bringing a new audience to a once traditional style of music.

As less traditional forms of folk music gain popularity, tension between so-called traditionalists and the innovators. For example, traditionalists were outraged when Bob Dylan began to use an electric guitar. His electrified performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival was to prove to be an early focal point for this controversy. Other exponents of amplified music (such as Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span) saw the electrification of traditional musical forms as a means to reach a far wider audience. Their efforts have since been recognised by even some of the most die-hard of purists. Traditional folk music forms also merged with rock and roll to form the hybrid genre generally known as ‘Folk Rock’. This evolved through performers such as The Byrds, Simon and Garfunkel and The Mamas and the Papas.

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Simon and Garfunkle
Woodie Guthrie

Since the 1970s a genre of "contemporary folk" fuelled by new singer-songwriters keep the tradition of acoustic, non-classical music alive in the United States. In the 1980s a group of artists propagated a form of folk music also called country punk or folk punk, which eventually evolved into ‘Alternative Country’. The use of folk music has even continued into hard rock and heavy metal, with bands melding distinctive elements of folk styles from a wide variety of traditions, including traditional instruments such as fiddles, tin whistles and bagpipes as an element of their sound.

Steve Shorter: March 2007

Sources: Wikipedia, Piero Scaruffi: History of rock music, Encyclopedia Britannica 2002, BBC Online – Music.

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