Re: folk music

[Don Smith <dasmith at rotse2_physics.lsa.umich.edu>]

Hi,

Yeah, I agree that folk music is difficult, if not impossible to define.  I
suppose ostensibly it means "music by/for the people": i.e. music that people
play when they pick up their fiddles and banjos, often stuff written by that
most prolific of songwriters, A. Nonymous.  But while that definition covers a
lot of ground, it certainly is not adequate, because there's the whole modern
genre of "singer/songwriter", who may or may not play acoustic.  I'm working a
Peter Mulvey show tonight, and it's just going to be him playing acoustic
guitar.  That's often quintessential modern folk: one person and an acoustic
guitar.  But sometimes people like Peter or Jim Infantino, or Jennifer Kimball,
or Over the Rhine, for that matter, will have two modes of performance: the
acoustic solo gig and the full band electric gig, playing the same songs.  Is
the rock band mode still folk music?  And then someone mentioned "international"
music, which complicates the picture even more.

Sometimes people try to put an economic spin on it: folk music doesn't get the
big rock star promotion, airplay, and/or sales.  But then you have to figure in
Jewel Kilcher (who certainly started out folk, at least when I saw her solo
with an acoustic guitar.  I haven't seen her play since she went huge.) or even
Peter Paul & Mary.  Does Ani DiFranco still count as folk?  For a while, people
were calling her folk-punk.  But it is true that most folk acts fly under the
radar of pop music.

It's a crazy genre, because it tries to incorporate everything from Bob Dylan
to Ladysmith Black Mambazo.  I could try to take a stab at a definition,
but every one I've tried leaves out huge swaths of music that usually gets
lumped into "folk".  I tried a web search and found this interesting page
http://www.coe.ufl.edu/courses/EdTech/Vault/Folk/Definition.htm
which takes a crack at it, but also can't nail it down.

And yeah, I've got all Dar Williams's albums, although I just noticed my copy
of Honesty Room seems to have disappeared from my shelf.  Not good.

See ya,
-- 
Don Smith                           Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment
donaldas at umich_edu                                 http://xte.mit.edu/~dasmith/

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