There's a school of art that's known as "Primitive Art," "Naïve Art," or "Outsider Art." Actually these are all slightly different subsets of the same genre, which, in a nutshell, includes only those artists without any formal training or what we generally recognize as conventional, serious talent. It's art that arises out of nothing but the artist's Elvis-given need to express him/herself. Grandma Moses is the usual example, but in truth I think she's got far too much of an artist's eye for light and color to really be considered naïve. Maud Lewis, I think, is a better example of the kind of art I'm talking about.
Actually, both of these women say a lot in their work about the culture and traditions in which they live, which makes them overlap into another subset, "Folk Art." Folk Art is what I want to talk about today, because what we usually think of as "folk music" is not folk art. Not anymore. And for that reason, I think it's time for it to lose that banner.
You know, when it comes down to it I don't even know if America ever had folk music. Are we old enough? Were there any songs or other pieces of music that were indigenous to American culture and society? Well, yes, actually, but all of it is Native American—chants and dance songs and such. And it's hard to be sure that the people who concocted that music wouldn't be recognized as having serious, professional-caliber talent today. We certainly know that the American Indian musicians who played it were carefully trained.
But the stuff we generally think of as our folk music (those of us who descend from immigrants, slaves, pilgrims, what-have-you) mostly dates back to the Minstrel shows that started in the 1830s. The funny thing about the Minstrel Shows is that their conceit was that it was music of the folks, of the common man: that's why they had black performers and whites dressed as blacks. Blacks in America were considered the epitome of the primitive, ignorant class who were incapable of having talent or any craft that required more nuance than stacking bricks or hammering horseshoes.
What's funny about it is that, although we know much better today, we still buy into that conceit so much that we consider the professionally created material they performed back then to be folk forms today! The music of Stephen Foster, for example: "Oh Susannah," "Camptown Ladies," "My Old Kentucky Home." Or the tall tales, Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed. Or jokes like "Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?" and "Why do firemen wear red suspenders?" They're so engrained in America that you usually see them notated as "Traditional" anymore, which is a euphemism for "folk." But what we're talking about here is actually the beginning of pop culture.
Article comments
1 - Vern Halen
I'm sure you've read Greil Marcus's Invisible Republic, an in-depth discussion of what exactly constitutes folk music, with accents on the Smithsonian collection and Dylan's Basement Tapes. Fascinating.
But I've often wondered if rock 'n'roll wasn't the new folk music? Much the same can be said of it from it's 50's rockabilly beginnings, through to the 6's psych & the 70's punks. And I don't know if r'n'r even made it to the 21st century, although the White Stripes seem to use elements of it. Maybe each generation makes its own version of folk music.
2 - Lawrence Lim
I must admit I'm not very familiar with Folk Music but Laura Veirs is quintessential example of modern Folk and Americana. Her material is quite good.
If you'd like to hear some of her stuff, I suggest you give her latest album effort, Year of Meteors, a listen.
3 - godoggo
I'll just add that the idea that a folk musician needs to lack talent in order to be authentic seems a little silly to me.
Interesting though.
4 - Michael J. West
Yeah, I was probably oversimplifying a bit with the "Talent Need Not Apply" attitude. What I should have said, godoggo, was more along the lines of talent being unnecessary...or that it's helpful to have unconventional, unrefined talent that's at odds with the musical establishment.
Thus someone like, say, Daniel Johnston would probably have a shot at being folk music in the sense of the term that I'm chasing...
5 - zingzing
jandek!
6 - Oran Kelley
Surely the defining characteristic of folk music can't be uncertainty of origins? If so, folk music is pretty much a useless category and it doesn't matter wheteher America had it or has it.
It seems to me that you reject American "folk" music for what are really pedantic reasons. Surely the reason folk is folk is because of how it functions.
The question of whether or not we have folk music is a question of whether or not we have a music or musics that play the role that folk music may have in older cultures. Answering that question is a lot harder that tracing the orignins of a piece of music back to travelling shows or an old recording.
OPK
7 - Michael J. West
I think, Oran, that you got the superficial points without seeing the overriding ones. No, the definition of folk music is that it's part of an "everyday" sort of cultural tradition, instead of an ivory tower (academic or simply industry-specific). Which is, in fact, what you're talking about: the role it played in other cultures.
What I'm talking about the origins of folk music, I'm simply saying that what we often think of as folk music is, in fact, commercial music with a commercial role. It exists because people wanted to make sheet-music royalties and sell tickets to minstrel shows. That's pop culture, not folk culture.
Now, one could argue that folk culture was just pop culture before it had a name, but I wouldn't agree with that either.
In any case, what you're saying is exactly what I was saying; the part about folk's origins is just one (fairly minor) aspect of it.
8 - zingzing
i think mike is trying to say (he will point out that i am wrong any time now) that folk culture exists as it always has in the united states (that is, differently than it did in europe or asia or africa, but it is what it is) and that what bob dylan does is definitely not folk culture. it is a commercial appropriation of folk culture, made, on some level, for financial gain. it is not "pure," (made only inside a tradition or for pleasure,) which is the one thing that folk culture needs to be in order to still be folk.
9 - Mark Saleski
interesting stuff.
the thing is, this country is SO much different from when our original folk music came around that i'm not sure that questioning the music's existence is even valid.
as far as those carrying on the tradition, i would submit that people like Greg Brown, Tom Waits and Gillian Welch are doing a fine job.
10 - Silas Kain
When I saw this one I had the urge to go buy some granola and macrame a plant hangar. Having said that, I agree that Tom Waits is doing a good job of keeping folk music alive. I take a clogging class once a week and that gives me an opportunity to enjoy the more traditiuonal American music for an hour. For those of you who wonder what clogging is, it's kind of Riverdance meets Deliverance.
11 - Mark Saleski
woa! now that...is a colorful description of clogging!
12 - Vern Halen
Mark S: "the thing is, this country is SO much different from when our original folk music came around that i'm not sure that questioning the music's existence is even valid."
Definitely yes. The founding fathers and their descendants up to a couple of generations would shake their collective heads at modern America. They would see a people poised on the edge of greatness, but unable to do so due to pussyfooting around the middle ground, afraid of offending the left or the right. Go back to that Smithsonian collection, or Doc Boggs or Woody Guthrie or early Dylan - none of these artists were afraid to call it as they saw it, even if they were wrong. That's why I think rock 'n' roll inherited the folksinger's tradition, at least until it allowed itself to be tamed by the music industry. "Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss," as Townsend once wrote - that's got to be a line in the folksinger's tradition if there ever was one.
13 - Oran Kelley
Michael:
Your answer seems to me to be: Of course origins aren't really the determinant of what is folk music, my point is that what some people call folk music originates in someone's attempt to make money from the commercial sale of music.
In other words, you continue to be preoccupied with origins.
Let us suppose that everything that is called folk music in America today originated as 19th digestive aid jingles.
If that music today *functions* in the same way (or in a strongly analogous way) as folk music does in traditional cultures, then it's folk music, regardless of its origins.
Origins don't matter if the music does the same work is what I'm saying. I don't see what difference it makes is a piece of music comes from an ad if no one realizes it, if people embrace it AS folk music.
OPK
14 - Michael J. West
Oran:
I am beginning to see your point. Half of it, anyway.
You're right: I am giving 100% credit for what our SCOTUS friends call "original intent." Which I can't really do, since the new age of "folk" musicians obviously have some intention of being considered genuine folk music.
However! I can't possibly go to the complete opposite extreme that you suggest and give 100% to perception, either.
Basically, we're both seeing this as a black-and-white situation, it's just that I'm only seeing the black and you're only seeing the white. Both have to figure into the equation. Look at it this way: for a piece of music to have the same function as folk music, there has to be some give in the "intent" department.
If something is intended for the sole purpose of marketing a "here today, gone tomorrow" product, like a limited-time-only burger from McDonald's or a 2005 Pontiac, is it really going to serve the same function as folk music? No way.
There's got to be a quality that doesn't immediately date the thing, for example. And given that, how long do we let the song live independent of that intent before we say that it serves the same function as folk music?
In Europe, it's been centuries. In America it may be more a matter of decades, but how many? Three? Five? Twelve?
In other words, it ain't all origin, and it ain't all reception. Somewhere in the middle ground between the two, I think, must be where folk music is born. But what that is, I'm not sure...
15 - GoHah
Should we equate minstrel shows and Stephen Foster, the precursors to popular song, with American Folk music? When it comes to Folk, I always think of the efforts of musicologist John Lomax, who went out into the field, into the out-of-the-way places--the country, mountains--during the 1930s and 1940s seeking and recording true, unfamiliar and largely unheard, traditional American folk songs. This was the bounty that people like Seeger, Guthrie built on, and (I think) a prime source for the Smithsonian Folk anthologies. Songs that had been passed along for more up to 150 years or so--songs, for example, that originally came from Scotland and went with the Scotch-Irish settlers in the Appalachians. And not any less American because of that, especially with the uniquely Amnerican migration patterns and westward movements, and concomitant with that development of instruments like the banjo, and continuation of an oral tradition.
I think the question about the survival of Folk music today concerns whether--in today's society, with new technologies amd mass communications--true Folk (e.g.,that doesn't depend on record contracts and concert tours) still exists and thrives. A falling tree doesn't need John or Alan Lomax to record it in order to exist (although maybe there are some people in the field carrying on the tradtion--I don't know).
16 - Megan
I liked your article, but I would argue that folk is just evolving. I don't know whether or not you keep up with the dizzying multitudes of indie scenes, but one that is gaining more and more importance is the "freak-folk" of Devendra Banhart. If you've never heard him, I can recommend a place for you to start. You might like him because you can hear the past in his voice.
17 - Mark Saleski
oh, yea..i forgot about Banhart. Tom Waits' ultra-weird musical nephew. or something.
18 - Megan
Also, any year where Vashti Bunyan finally releases her second album is a good year for folk.
19 - Vern Halen
Hmmm..... maybe the fact that there's such an in-depth discussion about folk music is the proof that it doesn't exist anymore. I can't imagine Robert Johnson or Woody Guthrie trying to decide if they played a type of folk music or not.
20 - Michael J. West
Hmmm..... maybe the fact that there's such an in-depth discussion about folk music is the proof that it doesn't exist anymore. I can't imagine Robert Johnson or Woody Guthrie trying to decide if they played a type of folk music or not.
Maybe it's not that folk music doesn't exist anymore, per se, maybe it's just that music has evolved to the point where there aren't clear criteria for what is and isn't folk music.
Or maybe it's just that all of us here, and I cheerfully include myself, take the whole "authenticity" thing WAY too seriously.
21 - Vern Halen
MJW: "Or maybe it's just that all of us here, and I cheerfully include myself, take the whole "authenticity" thing WAY too seriously."
Touchez & a tip o' the hit to yourself, Mr. West! You got the final word here as far as I'm concerned.
22 - Temple Stark
The section editor chose this as a pick of the week. Go HERE to find out why.
Also, as a part of being a pick you get to make a pick of your own for anytime from Dec. 3 on. Click the same HERE link to find out how.
Thank you.
Temple
23 - dyrkness
As Louis Armstrong once said,"All music is folk
music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song."I think your definition of "folk music" is much too confining.There seems to be a confusion between style and substance.Isn't that the main problem with the 21st century anyway?
24 - Michael J. West
I think your definition of "folk music" is much too confining.
Suggestion for an alternative definition?
25 - Ava
My question is what are three things that Grandma Moses and Maud Lewis had in common?