Folk Music

Folk music, in its traditional sense, is the music of ordinary people, learned by listening and passed from generation to generation without being written down. Songs and tunes change as they travel, so the same ballad may exist in dozens of versions in different villages. Most traditional folk songs have no known composer.

Every culture has its own folk music: work songs, lullabies, dance tunes, ballads that tell stories, songs for weddings, funerals and festivals.

Typical features

Folk traditions vary enormously around the world, but European and North American folk song often has:

• Strophic form: many verses sung to the same tune.
• Simple, singable melodies, often based on modes (Dorian, Mixolydian, Aeolian) or the pentatonic scale rather than major and minor.
• Acoustic instruments: voice alone, or with fiddle, guitar, banjo, accordion, bagpipes, flute or whistle.
• Drones and repetitive dance rhythms in instrumental music.

Collectors and scholars

From the 19th century, scholars began writing down folk songs before they disappeared. Francis James Child collected English and Scottish ballads (the "Child ballads"); Cecil Sharp collected songs in England and in the Appalachian Mountains; Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály recorded thousands of songs in Hungary and neighboring regions; and John and Alan Lomax made field recordings across the United States for the Library of Congress. Composers often built these melodies into concert music (see nationalism).

The folk revival

In the 1950s and 60s, a folk revival in the United States and Britain brought folk songs, and newly written songs in folk style, to a mass audience. Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger were its elders; Joan Baez and Bob Dylan were among its young stars. Many revival songs carried political messages, and the movement created the modern singer-songwriter. Today "folk" also names a broad genre of acoustic, song-centered music.

Playing and learning folk music

Folk music is meant to be learned by ear: listen, sing along, and pick up tunes from other players. Session players learn dozens of tunes this way. On guitar, a few open chords and a steady strum or fingerpicking pattern will accompany most folk songs. The Modes and Pentatonic & Blues Scales worksheets cover scales many folk tunes use.