In 1996, the Californian singer Gillian Welch released her debut album, Revival. Her unassuming, folksy songs and plaintive, old-time singing could have come straight out of the Appalachians at any time in the last hundred years. With guitarist David Rawlings, Welch came to pinpoint and define a new style of folk music: the neo-traditional performer. Welch personified ...
Traditional is the term given to folk music so old its origins have been long forgotten. Different songs are often performed to the same tunes and sometimes the same ballad is played with various tunes. Songs with the same story pop up on both sides of the atlantic with different treatments, after being transported by emigrants and adapted through the ...
Davey Graham (b. 1940) (originally Davy Graham) is a guitarist who is credited with sparking the folk-rock revolution in the UK in the Sixties. He inspired many of the famous fingerstyle guitarists, such as Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Martin Carthy, Paul Simon and even Jimmy Page, who heavily based his solo ‘White Summer’ on Graham’s ‘She ...
A founding member of the band Pentangle, Bert Jansch (b. 1943) was born in Glasgow. He was heavily influenced by the guitarist Davey Graham and folk singers such as Anne Briggs. He has recorded 25 albums and toured extensively, influencing artists like Jimmy Page, Ian Anderson, Nick Drake and Neil Young. Jansch earned a Lifetime Achievement Award ...
John Renbourn (b. 1944) is a father of contemporary British folk music and an acknowledged master of fingerstyle guitar. He is best known for his collaboration with guitarist Bert Jansch and his work with the folk group Pentangle. Renbourn created music that fused British and Celtic folk with blues, jazz, British early music, classical guitar and Eastern forms. ...
From the urban cowboys came the neo-traditionalists, who offered a stark and welcome alternative. Their music, with its resolute devotion to earlier styles like honky-tonk, bluegrass and old-time country, bristled with the vitality and spirit of innovation that urban cowboy lacked. Emmylou Harris, a lovely, ethereal singer, came of age in the country and ...
It was Louis Armstrong (or Leadbelly, depending on whom you believe) who came up with the famous final word on the definition of folk music: ‘It’s ALL folk music … I ain’t never heard no horse sing.…’ The quote has been repeated ad nauseam throughout the years, but it has not prevented strenuous debate about the meaning of ...
To this day, many still contend that a written song is not a folk song. Purists claim that only a traditional song, shaped and honed by the environmental context that produced it and handed down by word of mouth through the generations, can justly claim to be true folk music. Indeed, the great Scots folklorist, writer ...
Mention of the folk revival is generally applied to the late-1950s and early 1960s, when a new generation of enthusiasts earnestly set about exploring the history of folk music and recreating its passionate, social ideals. There had been other folk revivals throughout history, but they tended to stem from the middle classes in search of a purer identity ...
For many people in the 1960s, folk was equated with acoustic music or even unaccompanied music – and electric guitars were the great taboo. The sense of propriety among the revivalists of the time made them fiercely protective of the music, determined to preserve its purity in the face of attack from the evil forces of pop. Many saw ...
Folk pop is often looked down on by connoisseurs of the music who believe that in its purest form it should have nothing in common with the charts and the commercial world. Yet folk has punctured the mainstream more often than most would imagine, and in many ways its popularity has been reliant on those who’ve broadened the market by ...
Folk music in Britain has an erratic history, susceptible to the fickle fates of fashion and image and almost eradicated completely by the apathy of the people whose culture it represents. Yet a hugely colourful treasure chest of music and traditions survives in the network of folk clubs that still exist up and down the country. British folk clubs have ...
If there is a strand of folk music that seems universally popular, it’s Irish. This is not surprising considering Ireland’s sad history of emigration and the transportation of their music to all corners of the globe. Through those claiming ancestry or simply connecting with a music that conveys extremes of emotion, it has the proven ability to connect with ...
Alternative music is often seen as a controversial idiom, reflecting those who have sought to change the existing styles by fusing it with others, or approaching it from a different angle. It is criticized by purists who believe in the folk ideal, but supported by those who argue that stagnant music is a dead music and that it ...
It may not fit into the purists’ ideal, but contemporary song has long been an essential element of folk music. The art of the singer-songwriter, from Woody Guthrie through to Bob Dylan, and a whole host of artists who emerged in their wake, fuelled much of the early folk revival. Today’s singer-songwriters borrow heavily from many disparate ...
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