Folk

Folk music is a very broad term used for music rooted in the mostly oral traditions of initially rather small social groups. The original context of folk music often was to accompany other types of social activities, like manual labour, religious rites or family gatherings. The eponymous, notoriously difficult “folk” or “people” concept can therefore relate to a number of different aspects: groups defined through ethnicities, tribes, nations, large regions, occupations, religions, families etc. may each serve as parameters for different folk musics (such as Indigenous American Traditional Music, Hill Tribe Music, Canadian Folk Music, Work Song or East Asian Folk Music). It is used as a distinct category from the high art concept of Classical Music and comparatively modern forms of commercially distributed, written popular music (such as Pop or Rock).

The term nowadays can be divided into two different main categories: Traditional Folk Music and Contemporary Folk. Traditional folk music (as a subcategory of Regional Music) denotes many different types of music with usually specific regional roots and served as the original concept for folk music. Among its typical characteristics are unknown origins of songs (usually replaced with the concept of a collective composing effort through time), an evolutionary approach to songs, and a comparatively fixed repertory of similar tunes which varies in size. A once common criterion – folk music being “rural” as opposed to “urban” – is nowadays widely rejected. Arising in the mid-20th century, contemporary folk is meant to describe music that still has certain forms of European or American folk music as its major influence, yet bringing it from a traditional context into that of popular music.