Folk Traditions

What is folk?

A definition by Cecil Sharp, the English collector who first systematized the term: folk music is music handed down by oral tradition, varying as it passes from person to person, with no fixed authoritative version.

That definition was already wobbly when Sharp wrote it in 1907, and it is wobblier now. But it points to something real. Folk traditions are local music made by communities — agricultural, religious, occupational — without the apparatus of professional composition, copyright, or mass marketing. The same song shows up in Kentucky and County Clare; the singer's grandmother knew it; nobody can tell you who wrote it.

What follows is a small selection of living traditions, each a world unto itself.

Appalachian

The mountain South — eastern Tennessee, Kentucky, the Virginias, western North Carolina — preserved English, Scottish, and Irish balladry through three centuries of relative isolation. Cecil Sharp traveled the region in 1916–18 collecting songs and was astonished to find variants of Barbara Allen and The Cuckoo that had vanished from England itself. Sharp's collection includes Jean Ritchie of Viper, Kentucky, born in 1922 — the youngest of fourteen — who became one of the great American folk singers and helped launch the urban revival.

Instruments: the 5-string banjo (African in origin via the Caribbean; Joel Sweeney popularized the modern form in the 1830s); the fiddle; the dulcimer (Appalachian, lap-played, three or four strings); the autoharp. Styles: old-time (the Carter Family from Maces Spring, VA — Sara, Maybelle, A.P. — recorded for Ralph Peer at the Bristol Sessions, 1927, alongside Jimmie Rodgers, the founding event of country music); bluegrass (Bill Monroe, born Rosine, KY 1911 — assembled the Blue Grass Boys in 1939; Earl Scruggs's three-finger banjo style joined in 1945).

The Blues

Born in the Mississippi Delta and the lumber and turpentine camps of the South in the late 19th century. Twelve bars, three lines, a mode that bends the third and the seventh. The most influential American folk tradition, full stop.

Celtic

Ireland and Scotland share a related but distinct tradition of dance music (jigs, reels, hornpipes, slip jigs) and sean-nós ("old style") unaccompanied vocal singing. Instruments: the uilleann pipes (bellows-blown, indoor cousin to the Highland bagpipe; Séamus Ennis, Liam O'Flynn, Paddy Keenan); the fiddle; the tin whistle; the concertina; the bodhrán (frame drum). Modern groups: The Chieftains (Paddy Moloney, formed 1962); Planxty; The Bothy Band; Altan; in the U.S. revival, The Pogues brought Irish folk into punk.

Fado

Lisbon's urban song tradition, born in the working-class neighborhoods of the Alfama and Mouraria in the early 19th century. Two singers (a fadista and the audience) accompanied by Portuguese guitar (a 12-string, pear-shaped, teardrop-resonator instrument descended from the English cittern) and viola (the Spanish-style classical guitar). The keyword is saudade — a longing that has no English equivalent. Amália Rodrigues (1920–1999) was fado's voice in the 20th century. Mariza, Camané, Carminho, Ana Moura have carried it into the 21st. Coimbra has a separate, university-bound tradition sung only by men.

Mariachi

From Jalisco, western Mexico, by way of the haciendas of the 18th and 19th centuries. The classical mariachi ensemble is six to eight players: violins, two trumpets, vihuela (small high-pitched guitar), guitarrón (large bass guitar), guitar. The repertoire: son jalisciense, ranchera, bolero, huapango. Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán (founded 1898) is the canonical ensemble. José Alfredo Jiménez wrote some of the form's most enduring songs ("El Rey," "Caminos de Guanajuato"). Lola Beltrán, Vicente Fernández, Lila Downs, Natalia Lafourcade.

Other living traditions

The revivals

Folk has been rediscovered repeatedly: by Cecil Sharp's English Folk Dance and Song Society (1911); by John and Alan Lomax's Library of Congress field recordings (the 1930s and '40s, including the recordings of Lead Belly at Angola Prison and Muddy Waters at Stovall); by the Greenwich Village folk revival (Pete Seeger, the Weavers, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, the Newport Folk Festival starting 1959); by Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music (1952), six LPs of 1920s commercial recordings that became the urban revival's textbook.

The British folk revival of the 1960s — Ewan MacColl, Shirley Collins, Anne Briggs, Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Pentangle, Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny, Nick Drake, the Watersons — produced an entirely separate canon. The 21st century: Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Rhiannon Giddens, Sam Amidon, Anaïs Mitchell, the post-Mumford folk-pop wave.

The songbook

Harry Smith Anthology — watch on YouTube →

The Smithsonian & the field

Where the recordings live.

Folkways Records was founded by Moses Asch in 1948 with a stated commitment to publish anything of cultural significance, regardless of commercial appeal. By the time Asch died in 1986, Folkways had released over 2,000 records — Pete Seeger, Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, Mississippi John Hurt, the entire Anthology of American Folk Music, language documents, animal sounds, the music of Bali, the music of Madagascar. The Smithsonian Institution acquired the catalog after Asch's death and has kept every title in print ever since.

Other essential archives: Alan Lomax's recordings at the Library of Congress and the Association for Cultural Equity at Hunter College; the Topic Records catalog (UK, founded 1939, the longest-running indie label in the world); Rounder Records (Cambridge, MA, 1970, with the multi-volume Alan Lomax field-recording series); Arhoolie Records (Chris Strachwitz, 1960, blues and Tex-Mex); Tompkins Square (Josh Rosenthal, 2005, contemporary folk reissues).

Folk instruments

A short hardware catalog. Most of these can be made by hand.

Watch this performance