One problem I seem to be running into with this project is coming up with a conceptualization of Folk music, the specific genre I am studying. Last week I made a first stab at putting numbers on the market size, but based on comments from my adviser and my own uncertainty on what to consider folk or not when creating the maps, I decided to speak to the challenge of defining folk music in my post this week.
According to Merriam-Webster, folk music is defined as "the traditional music of the people in a country or region as well as a type of popular music that is based on traditional music and that does not use electric instruments" (Merriam-Webster). The first part of the definition very clearly speaks to international, country specific, music, as in Irish folk, Hungarian folk, Israeli folk, or any other nationality that you can think of. This part of the definition doesn't really apply to folk music within the US I think for the reason that our music industry is too larger and wide of breadth. Because of our extraordinarily diverse population, putting a a finger on what "traditional" music is for America, and even specific regional areas would prove to be a very challenging feat. I think the second part of the definition could help us out, specifically the part of exclusion of electric instruments. That's something concrete to go on, however figuring out what constitutes "based on traditional music" especially in an American context brings up the same problem as the first part of the definition. Maybe the challenge of American Folk music isn't so much the folk, but the underlying question of what is American tradition that stumps so many of us.
Perhaps folk music finds its definition in exemplary artists. The two names which dominate the American folk scene are Pete Seeger and Woodie Guthrie. Their names are the first to appear when conducting a Google search, and have come up in my Folkways inventory far more than any other artist. What this calls into question is whether the genre is determined by a artist specific model created by artists like Guthrie and Seeger, or if the genre is determined by set commonalities between artists, like style, lyrical spin, or more specific traits like having no electric instruments. In terms of market size, the better situation for artists on Folkways who aren't Seeger or Guthrie, would be a folk genre that doesn't rely on specific name recognition, rather a taste for an essence that is folk.
There is a serious differentiation when it comes to artist who consider themselves to be a part of the genre. I came across the most striking example of this while reading Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival & American Society 1940 - 1970 which was written by Ronald D. Cohen. Cohen writes of a legendary folk artist Bascom Lamar Lunsford who started the Asheville Folk Festival. Excited artists Guy Carawan,Frank Hamilton, and Jack Elliot were disappointed to find that folk hero Lunsford "turned out to be just the opposite of the kind of person I'd expected. He sings like an old mountain reprobate, full of glee and friendliness. He turned out to be a reactionary aristocrat however. The first question he asked us was 'Are you Communists?'" (Cohen, 4-5). The reason I cite this example is because it calls into question the general assumption that folk is a liberal genre, obviously segments of folk have strong liberal tendencies, Pete Seeger and his conflict with McCarthy during the Red Scare is a strong example of this, but it seems as though that definition doesn't encompass the whole genre. Perhaps there is a faction like Lunsford who represent a more conservative take on the genre, and if there is, the market for the music is far less limited. Of course perception is everything so the fact that folk is perceived to be liberal might make any ideological differentiation inconsequential.
Folk is both cursed and blessed with an indefinite nature. On the one hand, overlap with other genres and diversification means that most people have probably heard and appreciated at least one folk song or a song that could arguably pass as folk. This includes music in such genres as rock, country, bluegrass, and jazz to name a few. The fact that the genre lacks a strong identity and rests largely on the shoulders of a few big name artist, however, makes branding folk music as its own entity extremely difficult and therefore developing a loyal following of fans, especially for smaller scale artists, nearly impossible. While Moses Asch solved the preservation problem, getting the music he saved to those who might value it is a much harder task. The cause of that difficulty, in my opinion, is a lack of definition within the genre.
As with previous posts, I encourage you to consider the issue broadly, which might mean multiple possible ways to consider the music and see if it fits a folk description.
ReplyDeleteIf you go a generation later, which we associate with Bob Dylan, but there are other considerable artists like Judy Collins and Joan Baez, you might ask was some of their music folk but other not? If so, then it is the music that differentiates, not the performer. There is also the question of whether the delivery matters - acoustic guitar, not electric, no drums, maybe a harmonica but not a lot of other instrumentation, and a singing voice as key.
I would also encourage you to identify more artists that people associate with folk. Growing up, for me Peter, Paul, and Mary were bigger than Pete Seeger, Burl Ives was the most commonly heard singing voice in our house, and both Paul Robeson and Leadbelly got talked about but I believe we rarely if ever heard them.
I would disagree with your assessment at the end that the genre lacks a strong identity. Do note that other genres, rock for example, accommodate a wide variety of different types of music. Folk is almost certainly more clearly defined than rock. Was Simon and Garfunkel folk or rock or folk-rock?
In the late 1960s, there were two hip TV shows, in some sense the forerunners of the Daily Show and Colbert. One was called Rowan and Martin's Laugh In. The other was the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. The Smothers Brothers blended comedy with the music, which was definitely folk. They had other performers who were regulars on the show. One was Glen Campbell, who is really a country music guy. So there you have a case of a national audience quite willing to listen to both types of music.
If you go back to 1940s, in contrast, meaning this is pre-rock, I don't know if the situation is any purer regarding defining musical boundaries between genres, but you might get some idea by looking at pieces that many artists performed and asking about the origin of the piece. Here are a few songs you might investigate - The Leatherwing Bat, Joe Hill, Venezuela (I know this one was written by John Jacob Niles), The Foggy Foggy Dew, and perhaps a few others that you might garner by finding some albums, perhaps from Burl Ives or Richard Dyer Bennett. A look at individual songs such as these might be quite revealing.