Folk Music Definition?

Over the past couple of weeks, we have been listening to, analyzing, and discussing folk music. Although folk music is one of my favorite styles of music, I never thought to define it. My approach to listening to music before I enrolled in this seminar was to just listen and observe how it made me feel. I even had trouble with listening to the lyrics because I was more focused on the style, texture, and rhythm of the song. Now, I try to listen to the lyrics, the cadences, form, and other parts of the song so that I can have a better understanding of the meaning.

For one of our assignments, we were to read Bruno Nettl’s introductory essay to folk music. My initial reaction to this essay was that I thought that Nettl seemed like he knew what he was talking about. He did mention a couple of facts in the beginning that I agree with. Those were the two main approaches to defining folk music: composed in a particular style, and produced by a particular group or society (the “folk”), as well as the fact that folk music is usually considered as storytelling.

Nettl touched on many points of folk music vs. other styles of music. One of the types of music being compared to folk is cultivated, defined as “a part of culture through a written tradition”. Folk music today, according to Nettl, can have a different style from the folk music from decades ago. It could also be the opposite, being the same style as the style from decades ago. With this point, I agree with Nettl. In my quest to define folk music, I have realized that what I consider “folk music” varies. It can be any song with a guitar and a voice, or it could be more complex than that, using numerous instruments and having a faster or slower pace with a different type of voice singing.

Folk music vs. so-called primitive music is another main theme in Nettl’s essay. Primitive music is defined as music produced by pre-literative people. It is described as religious music, and more varied than folk music. Folk music, in this case, is described as being in cultures with reading and writing. I don’t agree nor disagree with Nettl’s definition of these two music types. This passage in the essay was more informational to me and therefore I took it as it was. If Nettl is writing the truth about pre-literative people and how they only wrote music that was more varied than folk music, then I will believe it because I don’t know any other facts that would contradict this.

In the case of simple vs. complex, another theme in Nettl’s essay, I believe that folk music is simple, not complex. As discussed in class, “simple” does not mean “bad” or “lacking”. When I think of a simple folk song, I picture a guitarist and vocalist (this may or may not be the same person) singing a simple tune that anyone could sing. Music like this may be “simple”, but to me it effectively relays the message or story of the song. If it were to be complex, it wouldn’t be very easy to distinguish the feel, mood, or the meaning of the song. Therefore, I agree with Nettl in that folk songs are simple vs. complex.

Nettl talks about changing through communal recreation vs. unchanging style/songs over time in his essay. What he believes is that folk music is changing and stemming off of original songs so much that there are lots of different versions of one song and sometimes they are so different that they are almost unrecognizable as an original folk song. I think that this most definitely can happen within the folk music world, but since I listen to lots of modern folk songs, I can also see that covers of newer folk songs are almost exactly the same as the original song, with minimal changes.

One of the parts of my definition for folk music is that the music tells a story or relays a strong message about society. In his essay, Nettl discusses how this is called “narrative”. He mentions that there are two main categories of narrative songs: ballads, which have a short, strophic stanza form, and epics, which are long and portray a series of events centering around a hero.

Another defining factor of folk music that we have discussed in class and is also found in Nettl’s essay is the idea of “music for the folk, by the folk”. Initially, I agreed with this statement, and I still partly do. If you think about it, “music for the folk, by the folk” could be used to describe any music style out there. Isn’t all music made by people? Therefore, isn’t all music made for other people? If artists weren’t making music for other people to listen, understand, or relate to, who else would they be making the music for? For this reason, I don’t completely agree with the phrase. On the other hand, I can understand why this can possibly be used to describe folk music. It is kind of like geometry in a way: all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. In this case, folk music can be defined as “music for the folk, by the folk”, but not all “folk” are creating folk music.

Overall, I agree with parts of Nettl’s essay, including the simple vs. complex theory and the narrative theory, but not with others, like communal recreation. I think that since there is no clear definition of folk music, it can be interpreted by people in many different ways and for that reason it is so special. Because everyone has their own definition of folk music, they appreciate it for what they believe it is.