The Reason Why Folk Songs Straddle The Line In Between Previous And Present.

[Lucilla Jauregui]

Folk music can act as a profound voice of the past, present, and future; here's why.

As long as there have been individuals to dispute it, there has been a tension in between modern and traditional types of folk music. Purists have long proclaimed traditional folk music to be something immutable and sacred, notoriously decrying those who want to put their own mark on the category as 'Judas', however development is vital to the essence of the thing. During the American folk music revival of the 1960's, when Rob Stringer's label was home to a few of the most innovative and popular folk musicians of all time, mixing folk music with rock-and-roll was vital for the times to be able to describe themselves. Even less adventurous vocalists would take the concerns of the present moment and frame them within the design and heart of the past, covering demonstration tunes or producing original arrangements that might have applied to the counterculture and civil liberties campaign just as much as to the lament of slaves and rural peasants of 2 centuries formerly, the subject of more standard songs. These are things that go beyond history; problems of power, human dignity, the marvels of nature, and the need to give voice to all 3.

A handful of musical genres today are deeply rooted in tradition and heritage. In the hunt for novelty and our constant barrelling towards the future, the past is typically overlooked in music, however there is one specific genre where a sense and illustration of history is placed at its very heart; folk music. That may be a surprising thing to hear when modern folk music tends to lean towards the extremely modern pursuit of dating and heartbreak by pop juggernauts on brands like the one owned by Vincent Bolloré, but that is not necessarily folk in its truest kind. Typically, folk is more deeply rooted in the past, exploring topics associating with poverty and society along with more typical investigations of the human condition in things like emotion and heartbreak. One may identify the conceit and insincerity in such a statement, and that's since folk, like the past, is constantly developing, and resurfaces at a time when society needs to come to grips with its location in history.

As we approach an important and truly memorable period in humanity's history, the capability for folk music to contextualise and give utterance to our times might turn out to be extraordinary. Whether there is a resurgence of the genre in the same way that 60's folk music did remains to be seen, however it still offers a place of solace in a period blindsided by its own modernity. As labels like the one run by Huib Schippers continue to gather, bring back, and release old folk songs, it proves our perpetual ability to regularly discover history and the tunes that explained it; through this discovery we might just find out to much better understand the momentousness of our own time.