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

[Trapani Desrosier]

Folk music can function as an extensive voice of the past, present, and future; here's why.

As long as there have actually been people to dispute it, there has actually been a stress in between modern and traditional types of folk music. Perfectionists have long proclaimed traditional folk music to be something immutable and sacred, famously decrying those who want to put their own mark on the category as 'Judas', but development is essential to the essence of the thing. Throughout the American folk music revival of the 1960's, when Rob Stringer's label was home to some of the most innovative and popular folk musicians of all time, blending folk music with rock-and-roll was necessary for the times to be able to describe themselves. Even less adventurous singers would take the concerns of the current zeitgeist and frame them within the style and substance of the past, covering demonstration songs or producing initial arrangements that could have applied to the counterculture and civil rights movement just as much as to the elegy of slaves and rural peasants of two centuries previously, the topic of more standard tunes. These are things that transcend history; matters of power, human self-respect, the marvels of nature, and the need to give voice to all 3.

Few musical categories today are deeply rooted in legacy and custom. In the search for novelty and our constant barrelling towards the future, the past is often ignored in music, but there is one particular category where a sense and manifestation of history is placed at its very heart; folk music. That might be a surprising thing to hear when modern folk music tends to lean towards the really modern consideration of relationships and heartbreak by pop juggernauts on brands like the one owned by Vincent Bolloré, however that is not always folk in its truest kind. Typically, folk is more deeply rooted in the past, exploring topics relating to poverty and society along with more common explorations of the human condition in things like love and heartbreak. One may acknowledge the conceit and hypocrisy in such a statement, and that's due to the fact that folk, like the past, is always evolving, and resurfaces at a time when society must grapple with its location in history.

As we approach a crucial and really momentous era in humanity's history, the ability for folk music to contextualise and give expression to our times could prove to be amazing. Whether there is a resurgence of the category in the same way that 60's folk music did remains to be seen, but it still offers a spot of comfort 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 shows our continuous capability to regularly uncover history and the tunes that explained it; through this knowledge we might just find out to better comprehend the momentousness of our own time.