The genesis of folk music and its place in the modern day
Folk music escapes precise definition, even among musicologists and anthropologists, yet most people can recognize it when they hear it. This recognition is not surprising. Most people in the world are exposed to folk songs from the moment they enter the world in the form of lullabies their mothers sing to them to soothe, comfort and lull them to sleep. These lullabies were probably sung to these mothers by their own mothers and so on, into the distant past. The chief characteristic of this kind of music is that it is an oral tradition, a tradition shared among a group of people with a common culture and history, and occupying a specific region. Music scores are generally absent, yet variation is kept to a minimum. You sing and play it as you heard it.
Folk music emerges, rather than breaks onto the popular scene, carrying with its memorable melodies lyrics that speak of what is common to the folk, to the vast majority of the human population. From the folk, it clearly originates from the lower economic stratas of society, those who are not apt to be exposed to the more artistic, classical styles that are found among city dwellers, in castles and capitals, among the wealthy and powerful. More closely associated to the country people as opposed to the city dweller, to the tribe than to modern nation states, to the laborer than to the elite, folk music springs from the unaffected, simple, earthy hearts of the common man.
Coming from the working class, folk song themes cover the range of common human experience, from the pain and sweat of hard labor to the stirrings of the heart. Many hymns properly belong in the folk category. Many speak of poverty, of travel and migration, of loss and death. Many laud the virtues of wine, of celebration gatherings and of dance and love. Folk heroes and their exploits might be recalled. Conflicts with the law are common themes, while others lament the effects of war on the common man. In recent decades, social protest against economic inequalities, racial discrimination and the duplicity of government have been addressed by popular folk songs, such as those songs that appeared in the 1960s and 1970s. Folk music tells the story of the common people's experience.
Folk songs went largely unstudied until the rise of nationalist sentiments, as governments of the people arose. Nations sought to distinguish their identities, and many regionally popular songs became national. The national folk song is more contrivance than fact. Most modern states are made up of more than one ethnicity, and folk music is typically ethnic in character. This was recognized by the Grammy Awards when the folk category, used since 1959, was dropped in favor of its replacement category, ethnic and traditional recordings. Whether called folk or ethnic, folk music remains an expression of the common man, his world view and his feeling towards it.
With the predominance of popular music today, folk songs are in short supply and may soon become an artifact of a time past. Let's hope that the folk from whom this music originates will not also disappear with the folk songs that once expressed the heart of the simple man.