Ethnic folk music from other countries also had a boom during the American folk revival. The most successful ethnic performers of the revival were the Greenwich Village folksingers, The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, whom "Billboard Magazine" listed as the eleventh best-selling folk musicians in the United States. The group, which consisted of Paddy Clancy, Tom Clancy, Liam Clancy, and Tommy Makem, predominantly sang English-language, Irish folk songs, as well as an occasional song in Irish Gaelic. Paddy Clancy also started and ran the folk-music label Tradition Records, which produced Odetta's first solo LP and initially brought Carolyn Hester to national prominence.
Ethnic folk music
American folk music revival
American folk music revival | Ethnic folk music
The most successful ethnic performers of the revival were the Greenwich Village folksingers, The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. Josh White, Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Big Bill Broonzy, Richard Dyer-Bennet, and many others. The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. Josh White, Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Big Bill Broonzy, Richard Dyer-Bennet, Oscar Brand, Jean Ritchie, John Jacob Niles, Susan Reed, Paul Robeson and Cisco Houston.
who is the original singer of you're gonna miss me when i'm gone
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Over the years, the original has been recorded by many artists, most notably by Charlie Monroe. Lulu and the Lampshades were the first to use the cup game for percussion when performing the song
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who is this mentioned person?
user
He  was an American country and bluegrass music guitarist.
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does he have siblings?
user
Yes, Bill Monroe, Bertha, Birch
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what are his single works?
user
Sorry. I cannot find the answer based on the context.
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among the above three brothers; was the first one part of any band?
user
Yes,  Blue Grass Boys
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was he also a guitarist?
user
No, he was a mandolinist.
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was he into folk music?
user
Yes, Monroe's fortunes began to improve during the American folk music revival, associating his style more with traditional folk music than with the country-and-western genre with which it had previously been identified.
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when did this revival touch its highest peak?
user
1959
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did any other music genre absorb this genre?
user
Yes, Ethnic folk music
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can you name any person or band or anything like that which belonged to this revival period?
user
These groups also sang many English-language songs of foreign origin.
American folk music revival | Ethnic folk music
Pete Seeger played the banjo on their Grammy-nominated 1961 album, "A Spontaneous Performance Recording", and Bob Dylan later cited the group as a major influence on him. The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem also sparked a folk-music boom in Ireland in the mid-1960s, illustrating the world-wide effects of the American folk-music revival. Books such as the popular best seller, the "Fireside Book of Folk Songs" (1947), which contributed to the folk song revival, featured some material in languages other than English, including German, Spanish, Italian, French, Yiddish, and Russian. The repertoires of Theodore Bikel, Marais and Miranda, and Martha Schlamme also included Hebrew and Jewish material, as well as Afrikaans.
American folk music revival | Ethnic folk music
Ethnic folk music from other countries also had a boom during the American folk revival. The most successful ethnic performers of the revival were the Greenwich Village folksingers, The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, whom "Billboard Magazine" listed as the eleventh best-selling folk musicians in the United States. The group, which consisted of Paddy Clancy, Tom Clancy, Liam Clancy, and Tommy Makem, predominantly sang English-language, Irish folk songs, as well as an occasional song in Irish Gaelic. Paddy Clancy also started and ran the folk-music label Tradition Records, which produced Odetta's first solo LP and initially brought Carolyn Hester to national prominence.
American folk music revival | Ethnic folk music
The American folk music revival began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. Its roots went earlier, and performers like Josh White, Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Big Bill Broonzy, Richard Dyer-Bennet, Oscar Brand, Jean Ritchie, John Jacob Niles, Susan Reed, Paul Robeson and Cisco Houston had enjoyed a limited general popularity in the 1930s and 1940s. The revival brought forward styles of American folk music that had, in earlier times, contributed to the development of country and western, jazz, and rock and roll music.
American folk music revival | Introduction
The American folk music revival was a phenomenon in the United States that began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. Its roots went earlier, and performers like Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, and Oscar Brand had enjoyed a limited general popularity in the 1930s and 1940s. The revival brought forward musical styles that had, in earlier times, contributed to the development of country & western, jazz, and rock and roll music.
Folklore of the United States | Folk music
The folk revival in New York City was rooted in the resurgent interest in square dancing and folk dancing there in the 1940s, which gave musicians such as Pete Seeger popular exposure. The folk revival more generally as a popular and commercial phenomenon begins with the career of The Weavers, formed in November 1948 by Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, Fred Hellerman, and Ronnie Gilbert of People's Songs, of which Seeger had been president and Hays executive secretary. People's Songs, which disbanded in 1948–49, had been a clearing house for labor movement songs (and in particular, the CIO, which at the time was one of the few if not the only union that was racially integrated), and in 1948 had thrown all its resources to the failed presidential campaign of Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace, a folk-music aficionado (his running mate was a country-music singer-guitarist).
American folk music revival | Early years
The Weavers' first big hit, the flipside of Lead Belly's "Good Night Irene", and a top seller in its own right, was in Hebrew ("Tzena, Tzena, Tzena") and they, and later Joan Baez, who was of Spanish descent, occasionally included Spanish-language material in their repertoires, as well as songs from Africa, India, and elsewhere. The commercially oriented folk-music revival as it existed in coffee houses, concert halls, radio, and TV was predominantly an English-language phenomenon, though many of the major pop-folk groups, such as the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul and Mary, The Chad Mitchell Trio, The Limeliters, The Brothers Four, The Highwaymen, and others, featured songs in Spanish (often from Mexico), Polynesian languages, Russian, French, and other languages in their recordings and performances.
American folk music revival | Ethnic folk music
Starting in the mid-20th century a phenomenon termed the folk music revival began, forming a new contemporary type of folk music. It was somewhat centered on but not limited to the United States. While sometimes termed the American Folk Music Revival, it was somewhat international and does not fit some narrower definitions of American folk music even when the artists were American. Prominent artists from this movement include Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, The Weavers, Burl Ives, and others. A more commercially oriented version of folk music emerged in the 1960s, including performers such as The Kingston Trio, The Limeliters, The Brothers Four, Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, The Highwaymen, Judy Collins, The New Christy Minstrels, and Gordon Lightfoot, as well as counterculture and folk rock performers including Bob Dylan, The Byrds, Arlo Guthrie, and Buffy Sainte-Marie.
American folk music | 20th century folk revival music
The revival turned up a tremendous wealth and diversity of music and put it out through radio shows and record stores.
American folk music revival | Archivists, collectors, and re-issued recordings
Many topical songwriters with social and political messages emerged from the folk music revival of the 1960s, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Judy Collins, Arlo Guthrie, and others. The folk revival can be considered as a political re-invention of traditional song, a development encouraged by Left-leaning folk record labels and magazines such as Sing Out! and Broadside. The revival began in the 1930s and continued after World War II. Folk songs of this time gained popularity by using old hymns and songs but adapting the lyrics to fit the current social and political conditions.
Music and politics | American folk revival
The American folk-music revival began during the 1940s; building on the interest in protest folk singers such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, it reached a peak in popularity in the mid-1960s with artists such as Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. In 1948, Seeger formed the Weavers, whose mainstream popularity set the stage for the folk revival of the 1950s and early 1960s and also served to bridge the gap between folk, popular music, and topical song. The Weavers' sound and repertoire of traditional folk material and topical songs directly inspired the Kingston Trio, a three-piece folk group who came to prominence in 1958 with their hit recording of "Tom Dooley".
Folk rock | Folk revival
Major traditional performers included the Copper Family, The Watersons, the Ian Campbell Folk Group, and Shirley Collins. The fusing of various styles of American music with English folk also helped to create a distinctive form of guitar fingerstyle known as ‘folk baroque’, which was pioneered by Davy Graham, Martin Carthy, John Renbourn and Bert Jansch. Several individuals emerged who had learnt the old songs in the oral tradition from their communities and therefore preserved the authentic versions. These individuals, such as Sam Larner, Harry Cox, Walter Pardon, and Frank Hinchliffe, released albums of their own and were revered by folk revivalists.
English folk music | Folk revivals 1890–1969
During the 1950s, the growing folk-music crowd that had developed in the United States began to buy records by older, traditional musicians from the Southeastern hill country and from urban inner-cities. New LP compilations of commercial 78-rpm race and hillbilly studio recordings stretching back to the 1920s and 1930s were published by major record labels. The expanding market in LP records increased the availability of folk-music field recordings originally made by John and Alan Lomax, Kenneth S. Goldstein, and other collectors during the New Deal era of the 1930s and 40s. Small record labels, such as Yazoo Records, grew up to distribute reissued older recordings and to make new recordings of the survivors among these artists.
American folk music revival | Archivists, collectors, and re-issued recordings
The Kingston Trio provided the template for a flood of "collegiate folk" groups between 1958 and 1962. At roughly the same time as these "collegiate folk" vocal groups came to national prominence, a second group of urban folk revivalists, influenced by the music and guitar picking styles of folk and blues artist such as Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Brownie McGhee, and Josh White, also came to the fore. Many of these urban revivalists were influenced by recordings of traditional American music from the 1920s and 1930s, which had been reissued by Folkways Records; Harry Smith's "Anthology of American Folk Music" was particularly influential.
Folk rock | Folk revival
The American folk music revival, which focused on culture and entertainment, began in the 1930s and 1940s. During the Great Depression, folk music styles were disseminated around the country, as Delta blues, Latino and Cajun musicians, and itinerant honky tonk singers spread to cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City. The growth of the music industry in the same period was also important; higher potential profits from music placed pressure on artists, songwriters, and label executives to replicate previous hit songs. This meant that musical fads, such as Hawaiian slack-key guitar, never died out completely, since a broad range of rhythms, instruments, and vocal stylings were incorporated into disparate popular genres.
Roots revival | History
By the late 1960s, the scene had returned to being more of a lower-key, aficionado phenomenon, although sizable annual acoustic-music festivals were established in many parts of North America during this period. The acoustic music coffee-house scene survived at a reduced scale. Through the luminary young singer-songwriters of the 1960s, the American folk-music revival has influenced songwriting and musical styles throughout the world.
American folk music revival | Legacy
Folk music, which often carried the stigma of left-wing associations during the 1950s Red Scare, was driven underground and carried along by a handful of artists releasing records. Barred from mainstream outlets, artists like Seeger were restricted to performing in schools and summer camps, and the folk-music scene became a phenomenon associated with vaguely rebellious bohemianism in places like New York City (especially Greenwich Village), North Beach, and in the college and university districts of cities like Chicago, Boston, Denver, and elsewhere. Ron Eyerman and Scott Baretta speculate that: [I]t is interesting to consider that had it not been for the explicit political sympathies of the Weavers and other folk singers or, another way of looking at it, the hysterical anti-communism of the Cold War, folk music would very likely have entered mainstream American culture in even greater force in the early 1950s, perhaps making the second wave of the revival nearly a decade later [i.e., in the 1960s] redundant.The media blackout of performers with alleged communist sympathies or ties was so effective that Israel Young, a chronicler of the 60s Folk Revival, and was drawn into the movement through an interest in folk dancing, communicated to Ron Eyerman that he himself was unaware for many years of the movement's 1930s and early '40s antecedents in left-wing political activism.
American folk music revival | Early years
While the Romantic nationalism of the folk revival had its greatest influence on art-music, the "second folk revival" of the later 20th century brought a new genre of popular music with artists marketed through concerts, recordings and broadcasting. This is the genre that remains as "contemporary folk music" even when traditional music is considered to be a separate genre. One of the earliest figures in this revival was Woody Guthrie, who sang traditional songs in the 1930s and 1940s as well as composing his own. Among Guthrie's friends and followers as a collector, performer, and composer was Pete Seeger. In the 1930s, Jimmie Rodgers, in the 1940s Burl Ives, in the early 1950s Seeger's group the Weavers and Harry Belafonte, and in the late 1950s the Kingston Trio as well as other professional, commercial groups became popular.
Contemporary folk music | Folk revival of the mid-20th century in the English-speaking countries
"Folk music revival" refers to either a period of renewed interest in traditional folk music, or to an event or period which transforms it; the latter usually includes a social activism component. A prominent example of the former is the British folk revival of approximately 1890–1920. The most prominent and influential example of the latter (to the extent that it is usually called ""the" folk music revival") is the folk revival of the mid 20th century, centered in the English-speaking world which gave birth to contemporary folk music. See the "Contemporary folk music" article for a description of this revival.
Folk music | Folk music revivals
Many progressive folk performers continued to retain a traditional element in their music, including Jansch who became a member of the band Pentangle in 1967. Others largely abandoned the traditional element of their music. Particularly important were Donovan (who was most influenced by emerging progressive folk musicians in America such as Bob Dylan) and the Incredible String Band, who from 1967 incorporated a range of influences including medieval and Eastern music into their compositions, leading to the development of psychedelic folk, which had a considerable impact on progressive and psychedelic rock. Acoustic groups who continued to interpret traditional material through into the 1970s included Ossian and Silly Wizard.
Scottish folk music | Second revival
The huge commercial success of the Kingston Trio, whose recordings between 1958 and 1961 earned more than $25 million for Capitol records or about $195 million in 2014 dollars spawned a host of groups that were similar in some respects like the Brothers Four, Peter, Paul and Mary, The Limeliters, The Chad Mitchell Trio, The New Christy Minstrels, and more. As noted by critic Bruce Eder in the "All Music Guide", the popularity of the commercialized version of folk music represented by these groups emboldened record companies to sign, record, and promote artists with more traditionalist and political sensibilities. The Kingston Trio's popularity would be followed by that of Joan Baez, whose debut album "Joan Baez", reached the top ten in late 1960 and remained on the Billboard charts for over two years.
American folk music revival | The revival at its height
Dylan's record enjoyed some popularity among Greenwich Village folk-music enthusiasts, but he was "discovered" by an immensely larger audience when a pop-folk-music group, Peter, Paul & Mary had a hit with a cover of his song "Blowin' in the Wind". Peter, Paul & Mary also brought Pete Seeger and the Weavers' "If I Had a Hammer" to nationwide audiences, as well as covering songs by other artists such as Dylan and John Denver.
American folk music revival | The revival at its height
The British Invasion of the mid-1960s helped bring an end to the mainstream popularity of American folk music as a wave of British bands overwhelmed most of the American music scene, including folk. Ironically, the roots of the British Invasion were in American folk, specifically a variant known as skiffle as popularized by Lonnie Donegan; however, most of the British Invasion bands had been extensively influenced by rock and roll by the time their music had reached the United States and bore little resemblance to its folk origins. After Bob Dylan began to record with a rocking rhythm section and electric instruments in 1965 (see "Electric Dylan controversy"), many other still-young folk artists followed suit.
American folk music revival | Rock subsumes folk
Archivists and artists such as Alan Lomax, Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie were crucial in popularising folk music, and the latter began to be known as the Lomax singers. This was an era of folk music in which some artists and their songs expressed clear political messages with the intention of swaying public opinion and recruiting support. In the UK, Ewan MacColl and A. L. Lloyd performed similar roles, with Lloyd as folklorist and MacColl (often with Peggy Seeger) releasing dozens of albums which blended traditional songs with newer political material influenced by their Communist activism. In the later, post-war revival, folk music found a new audience with college students, partly since universities provided the organisation necessary for sustaining music trends and an expanded, impressionable audience looking to rebel against the older generation.
Music and politics | American folk revival
Baez's early albums contained mostly traditional material such as the Scottish ballad, "Mary Hamilton", as well as many covers of melancholy ballads that had appeared in Harry Smith's "Anthology of American Folk Music", such as "The Wagoner's Lad" and "The Butcher Boy". She did not try to imitate the singing style of her source material, however, but used a rich soprano with vibrato. Her popularity (and that of the folk revival itself) would place Baez on the cover of "Time Magazine" in November 1962. Baez, unlike the Kingston Trio, was openly political, and, as the civil rights movement gathered steam, aligned herself with Pete Seeger, Guthrie and others.
American folk music revival | The revival at its height
The second revival gained momentum after the Second World War, following on from the American folk music revival as new forms of media and American commercial music appeared to pose another threat to traditional music. The key figures were Ewan MacColl and A. L. Lloyd. The second revival was generally left wing in politics and emphasised the work music of the 19th century and previously neglected forms like erotic folk songs. Topic Records, founded in 1939, provided a major source of folk recordings. The revival resulted in the foundation of a network of folk clubs in major towns, from the 1950s.
English folk music | Folk revivals 1890–1969
As McCarthyism began to dominate the United States population and government, it was more difficult for folk artists to travel and perform since folk was pushed out of mainstream music. Artists were blacklisted, denounced by politicians and the media, and in the case of the 1949 Peekskill Riots, subject to mob attack.
Music and politics | American folk revival
This was how many urban white American audiences of the 1950s and 60s first heard country blues and especially Delta blues that had been recorded by Mississippi folk artists 30 or 40 years before. In 1952, Folkways Records released the "Anthology of American Folk Music", compiled by anthropologist and experimental film maker Harry Smith. The "Anthology" featured 84 songs by traditional country and blues artists, initially recorded between 1927 and 1932, and was credited with making a large amount of pre-War material accessible to younger musicians. (The "Anthology" was re-released on CD in 1997, and Smith was belatedly presented with a Grammy Award for his achievement in 1991.) Artists like the Carter Family, Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Clarence Ashley, Buell Kazee, Uncle Dave Macon, Mississippi John Hurt, and the Stanley Brothers, as well as Jimmie Rodgers, the Reverend Gary Davis, and Bill Monroe came to have something more than a regional or ethnic reputation.
American folk music revival | Archivists, collectors, and re-issued recordings
The fusing of various styles of American music with British folk also helped to create a distinctive form of fingerstyle guitar playing known as ‘folk baroque’, pioneered by Davy Graham, Martin Carthy, John Renbourn and Bert Jansch. This led in part to progressive folk music, which attempted to elevate folk music through greater musicianship, or compositional and arrangement skills. Many progressive folk performers continued to retain a traditional element in their music, including Jansch and Renbourn who, with Jacqui McShee, Danny Thompson, and Terry Cox, formed Pentangle in 1967. Others totally abandoned the traditional element and in this area particularly important were the Scottish artists Donovan (who was most influenced by emerging progressive folk musicians in America like Bob Dylan) and the Incredible String Band, who from 1967 incorporated a range of influences including medieval and eastern music into their compositions.
British folk revival | Progressive folk
The Weavers' career ended abruptly when they were dropped from Decca's catalog because Pete Seeger had been listed in the publication Red Channels as a probable subversive. Radio stations refused to play their records and concert venues canceled their engagements. A former employee of People's Songs, Harvey Matusow, himself a former Communist Party member, had informed the FBI that the Weavers were Communists, too, although Matusow later recanted and admitted he had lied. Pete Seeger and Lee Hays were called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955. Despite this, a Christmas Weaver reunion concert organized by Harold Leventhal in 1955 was a smash success and the Vanguard LP album of that concert, issued in 1957, was one of the top sellers of that year, followed by other successful albums.
American folk music revival | Early years
The Kingston Trio, a group originating on the West Coast, were directly inspired by the Weavers in their style and presentation and covered some of the Weavers' material, which was predominantly traditional. The Kingston Trio avoided overtly political or protest songs and cultivated a clean-cut, collegiate persona. They were discovered while playing at a college club called the Cracked Pot by Frank Werber, who became their manager and secured them a deal with Capitol Records. Their first hit was a catchy rendition of an old-time folk murder ballad, "Tom Dooley", which had been sung at Lead Belly's funeral concert. This went gold in 1958 and sold more than three million copies.
American folk music revival | The revival at its height
The Weavers, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, The Kingston Trio, Odetta, and several other performers were instrumental in launching the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s.
1950s in music | Folk music
The late 1940s and the early 1950s saw the beginning of popular folk music with groups like The Weavers. The Kingston Trio, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Odetta, and several other performers were instrumental in launching the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s.
Music history of the United States in the 1950s | Folk music
Folk-song collecting continued after World War I, but the nationalist impulse had subsided and with the tradition disappearing there were fewer singers available as sources. In 1932 the Folk-Song Society and the English Folk Dance Society merged to become the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS). New forms of media such as the phonograph and sound film meant that from the 1920s American music began to be increasingly important and even dominant in popular British culture, leading to a further sharp decline in traditional music. British folk song might have become a purely academic interest had it not been for a second wave of revival with a very different emphasis.
British folk revival | Second revival 1945–69
The critical role played by Freedom Songs in the voter registration drives, freedom rides, and lunch counter sit-ins during the Civil Rights Movement of the late 1950s and early '60s in the South, gave folk music tremendous new visibility and prestige. The peace movement was likewise energized by the rise of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the UK, protesting the British testing of the H-bomb in 1958, as well as by the ever-proliferating arms race and the increasingly unpopular Vietnam War. Young singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, playing acoustic guitar and harmonica, had been signed and recorded for Columbia by producer John Hammond in 1961.
American folk music revival | The revival at its height
The Kingston Trio, the Weavers, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Odetta, Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, The Byrds, Judy Collins, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Carolyn Hester, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Dave Van Ronk, Tom Rush, Fred Neil, Gordon Lightfoot, Ian and Sylvia, Arlo Guthrie and several other performers were instrumental in launching the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s.
1960s in music | Folk music
From the late 19th century there were a series of movements that attempted to collect, record, preserve and later to perform, English folk music and dance. These are usually separated into two folk revivals. The first, in the later 19th and early 20th centuries, involved figures including collectors Sabine Baring-Gould (1834–1924), Frank Kidson (1855–1926), Lucy Broadwood (1858–1939), and Anne Gilchrist (1863–1954), centred around the Folk Song Society, founded in 1911. Francis James Child's (1825–96) eight-volume collection "The English and Scottish Popular Ballads" (1882–92) became the most influential in defining the repertoire of subsequent performers, and Cecil Sharp (1859–1924), founder of the English Folk Dance Society, was probably the most important figure in understanding of the nature of folk song.
English folk music | Folk revivals 1890–1969
Meanwhile, bands like The Lovin' Spoonful and the Byrds, whose individual members often had a background in the folk-revival coffee-house scene, were getting recording contracts with folk-tinged music played with a rock-band line-up. Before long, the public appetite for the more acoustic music of the folk revival began to wane. "Crossover" hits ("folk songs" that became rock-music-scene staples) happened now and again. One well-known example is the song "Hey Joe", copyrighted by folk artist Billy Roberts, and recorded by rock singer/guitarist Jimi Hendrix just as he was about to burst into stardom in 1967. The anthem "Woodstock," which was written and first sung by Joni Mitchell while her records were still nearly entirely acoustic and while she was labeled a "folk singer", became a hit single for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young when the group recorded a full-on rock version.
American folk music revival | Rock subsumes folk
The British folk revival was an academic movement to transcribe and record traditional British songs during the late 19th and early 20th century. Pioneers of this movement were the Harvard professor Francis James Child (1825–96), compiler of "The English and Scottish Popular Ballads" (1882–92), Sabine Baring-Gould (1834–1924), Frank Kidson (1855–1926), Lucy Broadwood (1858–1939), and Anne Gilchrist (1863–1954). The Folk Song Society was founded in 1898 to promote this new endeavour. A major figure in this movement was Cecil Sharp who was the most influential on the repertoire of subsequent performers and defining the nature of folk song. His lectures and other publications attempted to define a musical tradition that was rural in origin, oral in transmission and communal in nature.
Roots revival | History
In the later 1980s, things began to look much more positive for the genre. After disbandment, Fairport's Cropredy Festival went from strength to strength growing to a regular 20,000 fans a year, and when they reformed in 1985 they were able to embark on increasingly successful tours and produce a series of highly regarded albums. The reason for this recording revival was partly because they abandoned the mainstream record business, instead focusing on growing their own audience and producing records through their own labels (Woodworm and Matty Grooves). The Albion Band survived by becoming involved in theatre productions and, from 1993 by shifting down to a small acoustic outfit that could play the still extensive network of folk clubs.
British folk rock | Resurgence 1985–present
These individuals, such as Sam Larner, Harry Cox, Walter Pardon, and Frank Hinchliffe, released albums of their own and were revered by folk revivalists. In Scotland the key figures were Hamish Henderson and Calum McLean who collected songs and popularised acts including Jeannie Robertson, John Strachan, Flora MacNeil and Jimmy MacBeath. In Wales the key figure was Dafydd Iwan, who founded the Sain record label in 1969.
British folk revival | Nature of the revival
These performers and several others were instrumental in launching the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s.
Music history of the United States in the 1960s | Folk music
She was one of the singers, along with Seeger, Josh White, Peter, Paul and Mary and Bob Dylan, who appeared at Martin Luther King's 1963 March on Washington and sang "We Shall Overcome", a song that had been introduced by People's Songs. Harry Belafonte was also present on that occasion, along with Odetta, whom Martin Luther King introduced as "the queen of folk music", when she sang "Oh, Freedom" ("Odetta Sings Folk Songs" was one of 1963's best-selling folk albums). Also on hand were the SNCC Freedom Singers, the personnel of which went on to form Sweet Honey in the Rock.
American folk music revival | The revival at its height
The movement became global in the 1960s and 1970s. In most cases, the folk music being revived was not quite extinct, though some hadn't been played for years or was moribund; such cases include the Celtic music of Cornwall and the Isle of Man, for example. In other cases, such as Cameroon and the Dominican Republic, no revival was necessary as the music remained common, and was merely popularized and adapted for mainstream audiences at home and abroad.
Roots revival | History
While in Scotland the circuit of ceilidhs and festivals helped prop up traditional music, from the late 1970s the attendance at, and numbers of, folk clubs began to decrease, probably as new musical and social trends, including punk rock, new wave and electronic music, began to dominate. Although many acts such as Martin Carthy and the Watersons continued to perform successfully, there were very few significant new acts pursuing traditional forms in the 1980s. This all began to change with a new generation in the 1990s, often children of major figures in the second revival. The arrival and sometimes mainstream success of acts such as Kate Rusby, Nancy Kerr, Kathryn Tickell, Spiers and Boden, Seth Lakeman, Eliza Carthy, Runrig and Capercaillie, all largely concerned with acoustic performance of traditional material, marked a radical turnaround in the fortunes of the tradition.
British folk revival | Traditional folk resurgence 1990 – present
The first English folk music revival had seen a huge effort to record and archive traditional English music by figures such as Cecil Sharp and Vaughan Williams in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The second revival in the period after the Second World War, built on this work and followed a similar movement in America, to which it was connected by individuals like Alan Lomax, who had fled to England in the era of McCarthyism. Like the American revival, it was often overtly left wing in its politics, but, led by such figures as Ewan MacColl and A.
British folk rock | Origins
In the 1950s and 1960s dedicated folk music collectors spread out across the country to record traditional music. The songs and tunes were popularized on public radio by performers such as Alan Mills, Stu Davis, Marg Osborne, and the Travellers.A number of musicians who grew up listening to this traditional music became singer-songwriters in the 1970s; for example, Gordon Lightfoot and Ian and Sylvia. English music: There were two folk music revivals in England. The first, led by Cecil Sharp, was academic. It involved the collection of songs and tunes and their publication in journals. It was at its peak about 1910.
Roots revival | English-speaking countries
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a new generation of young people were inspired by folk singers such as Guthrie. These "folk revivalists" became more politically aware in their music than those of the previous generation. The American Folk Revival was beginning to take place, focused on the issues of the day, such as the civil rights movement and Free Speech Movement. Pockets of folk singers were forming around the country in places such as Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. One of Guthrie's visitors at Greystone Park was the 19-year-old Bob Dylan, who idolized Guthrie.
Woody Guthrie | Folk revival and death
Some who defined commercialization as the beginning of this phase consider the commercial hit "Tom Dooley" by the Kingston Trio in 1958 as marking the beginning of this era. In 1963–1964, the ABC television network aired the "Hootenanny" television series devoted to this brand of folk music and also published the associated magazine "ABC-TV Hootenanny". Starting in 1950, the "Sing Out!", "Broadside", and "The Little Sandy Review" magazines helped spread both traditional and composed songs, as did folk-revival-oriented record companies. In the United Kingdom, the folk revival fostered young artists like the Watersons, Martin Carthy and Roy Bailey and a generation of singer-songwriters such as Bert Jansch, Ralph McTell, Donovan and Roy Harper; all seven achieved initial prominence in the 1960s.
Contemporary folk music | Folk revival of the mid-20th century in the English-speaking countries
Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and Tom Paxton visited Britain for some time in the early 1960s, the first two especially making later use of the traditional English material they heard.
Contemporary folk music | Folk revival of the mid-20th century in the English-speaking countries
Some twenty years late, this revival continued with the repopularization of pastorales, an ancient form of musical theater. There is also a modern style, inspired by the jongleurs and troubadours of the region's history, called rappadoc, which uses various lyrical styles in satirical and topical performance.
Music of Gascony | Folk music
Several Appalachian musicians obtained renown during the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s, including Jean Ritchie, Roscoe Holcomb, Ola Belle Reed, Lily May Ledford, and Doc Watson.
American folk music | Appalachian music
The revival was part of a wider national movement in the period around the First World War, and contributed to the creation of the English Pastoral School of classical music which incorporated traditional songs or motifs, as can be seen in the compositions of Percy Grainger (1882–1961), Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1951), George Butterworth (1885–1916), Gustav Holst (1874–1934) and Frederick Delius (1862–1934). In 1932 the Folk-Song Society and the English Folk Dance Society merged to become the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS). Some of these revivalists recorded folk songs on wax cylinders, and many of the recordings, including Percy Grainger's collection, are available online courtesy of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library.
English folk music | Folk revivals 1890–1969
Fusion genres such as folk rock and others also evolved within this phenomenon. While contemporary folk music is a genre generally distinct from traditional folk music, it often shares the same English name, performers and venues as traditional folk music; even individual songs may be a blend of the two. While the Romantic nationalism of the first folk revival had its greatest influence on art-music, the "second folk revival" of the later 20th century brought a new genre of popular music with artists marketed through concerts, recordings and broadcasting. One of the earliest figures in this revival was Woody Guthrie, who sang traditional songs in the 1930s and 1940s as well as composing his own.
Contemporary folk music | Introduction
In 2004, NPR published the book titled "The NPR Curious Listener's Guide to American Folk Music", Linda Ronstadt wrote the foreword. The Never-Ending Revival: Rounder Records and the Folk Alliance by Michael F. Scully (University of Illinois Press, 2008) In 2007, James P. Leary published "Polkabilly: How the Goose Island Ramblers Redefined American Folk Music", which proposes a redefinition of traditional American folk music and identifies a new genre of music from the Upper Midwest known as "Polkabilly", which blends ethnic music, old-time country music, and polka. The book was awarded the American Folklore Society’s Chicago Folklore Prize for the best book in the field of folklore scholarship.
American folk music | Books
The peak of traditional English folk, like progressive and electric folk, was the mid- to late-1970s, when, for a time it threatened to break through into the mainstream. By the end of the decade, however, it was in decline. The attendance at, and numbers of folk clubs began to decrease, probably as new musical and social trends, including punk rock, new wave and electronic music began to dominate. Although many acts like Martin Carthy and the Watersons continued to perform successfully, there were very few significant new acts pursuing traditional forms in the 1980s. This began to change with a new generation in the 1990s.
English folk music | Traditional folk resurgence 1990-present
Many previously obscure songs became standards at hootenannies and folk clubs due to their inclusion on the "Anthology". Some of the musicians represented on the "Anthology" saw their musical careers revived, and made additional recordings and live appearances. This document is generally thought to have been enormously influential on the folk & blues revival of the 1950s and 1960s, and brought the works of Blind Lemon Jefferson, Mississippi John Hurt, Dick Justice and many others to the attention of musicians such as Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. The "Harry Smith Anthology," as some call it, was the bible of folk music during the late 1950s and early 1960s Greenwich Village folk scene.
Anthology of American Folk Music | Influence
The "Anthology" has had enormous historical influence. Smith's method of sequencing tracks, along with his inventive liner notes, called attention to the set. This reintroduction of near-forgotten popular styles of rural American music from the selected years to new listeners had impact on American ethnomusicology, and was both directly and indirectly responsible for the aforementioned folk music revival. The music on the compilation provided direct inspiration to much of the emergent folk music revival movement. The Anthology made widely available music which previously had been largely the preserve of marginal social economic groups. Many people who first heard this music through the Anthology came from very different cultural and economic backgrounds from its original creators and listeners.
Anthology of American Folk Music | Influence
The second revival involved large-scale public performances of English music, beginning with the appearance of the Copper Family at the Royal Albert Hall in 1952, together with a proliferation of folk clubs meeting mainly in the upper rooms of public houses. Starting in the late 1960s the songs were performed in a contemporary style; this was the origin of the British folk rock style.
Roots revival | English-speaking countries
In the early 1960s, the American folk music revival was in full swing, and the San Francisco Bay Area had its own folk scene. In 1961, after getting out of the Army, Jerry Garcia started playing folk music and other old-time songs. Garcia would sing and play acoustic guitar as a member of various ensembles and bands. Over the next few years, Garcia also become interested in bluegrass music, and learned to play the banjo. As his music skills evolved, he continued to play in different bands with similarly inclined musicians. A number of these performances were captured on reel-to-reel tape.
Before the Dead | Recording
While this urban folk revival flourished in many cities, New York City, with its burgeoning Greenwich Village coffeehouse scene and population of topical folk singers, was widely regarded as the centre of the movement. Out of this fertile environment came such folk-protest luminaries as Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, and Peter, Paul and Mary, many of whom would transition into folk rock performers as the 1960s progressed. The vast majority of the urban folk revivalists shared a disdain for the values of mainstream American mass culture and led many folk singers to begin composing their own "protest" material. The influence of this folk-protest movement would later manifest itself in the sociopolitical lyrics and mildly anti-establishment sentiments of many folk rock songs, including hit singles such as "Eve of Destruction", "Like a Rolling Stone", "For What It's Worth", and "Let's Live for Today".
Folk rock | Folk revival
It has been influential in those parts of the world with close cultural connections to Britain, such as the US and Canada, and gave rise to the subgenre of medieval folk rock and the fusion genres of folk punk and folk metal. By the 1980s the genre was in steep decline in popularity, but has survived and revived in significance as part of a more general folk resurgence since the 1990s.
British folk revival | British folk rock
Some of this, particularly the Incredible String Band, has been seen as developing into the further subgenre of psych or psychedelic folk and had a considerable impact on progressive and psychedelic rock. There was a brief flowering of British progressive folk in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with groups such as the Third Ear Band and Quintessence following the eastern Indian musical and more abstract work by group such as Comus, Dando Shaft, The Trees, Spirogyra, Forest, and Jan Dukes De Grey, but commercial success was elusive for these bands and most had broken off, or moved in very different directions, by about 1973.
British folk revival | Progressive folk
Among the leading lights of the progressive folk movement were Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, who would later form the folk rock band Pentangle in the late 1960s. Other notable folk rock artists with roots in the progressive folk scene were Donovan, Al Stewart, John Martyn and Paul Simon.
Folk rock | Folk revival
But Leventhal persisted, and in 1955 he organised a Christmas Eve Weavers reunion concert at New York City's Carnegie Hall, persuading the members to take part by convincing each one that the others had already agreed. The concert ignited the folk music boom of the late 1950s and early 1960s, which in turn led to Leventhal recognising the talent of a 19-year-old Bob Dylan, and promoting his first concert, at the Town Hall in New York City in April 1963. Denied a passport until 1955 because of his Communist sympathies, Leventhal organised world tours for folk singers that the U.S.
Harold Leventhal | Folk music
During the 1950s and early 1960s in the UK, a parallel folk revival referred to as the second British folk revival, was led by folk singers Ewan MacColl and Bert Lloyd. Both viewed British folk music as a vehicle for leftist political concepts and an antidote to the American-dominated popular music of the time. However, it wasn't until 1956 and the advent of the skiffle craze that the British folk revival crossed over into the mainstream and connected with British youth culture. Skiffle renewed popularity of folk music forms in Britain and led directly to the progressive folk movement and the attendant British folk club scene.
Folk rock | Folk revival
Later, a dynamic of class and circumstances was added to this. The most prominent regionalists were literary figures with a particular interest in folklore. Carl Sandburg often traveled the U.S. as a writer and a poet. He also collected songs in his travels and, in 1927, published them in the book "The American Songbag". "In his collections of folk songs, Sandburg added a class dynamic to popular understandings of American folk music. This was the final element of the foundation upon which the early folk music revivalists constructed their own view of Americanism. Sandburg's working class Americans joined with the ethnically, racially, and regionally diverse citizens that other scholars, public intellectuals, and folklorists celebrated their own definitions of the American folk, definitions that the folk revivalists used in constructing their own understanding of American folk music, and an overarching American identity".
Folk music | North America
The song "We Shall Overcome" is perhaps the best-known example of political folk music, in this case a rallying-cry for the US Civil Rights Movement. Pete Seeger was involved in the popularisation of the song, as was Joan Baez. During the early part of the 20th century, poor working conditions and class struggle lead to the growth of the Labour movement and numerous songs advocating social and political reform. The most famous songwriter of the early 20th century "Wobblies" was Joe Hill. Later, from the 1940s through the 1960s, groups like the Almanac Singers and The Weavers were influential in reviving this type of socio-political music.
Music and politics | American folk revival
Contemporary folk music refers to a wide variety of genres that emerged in the mid 20th century and afterwards which were associated with traditional folk music. Starting in the mid-20th century a new form of popular folk music evolved from traditional folk music. This process and period is called the (second) folk revival and reached a zenith in the 1960s. The most common name for this new form of music is also "folk music", but is often called "contemporary folk music" or "folk revival music" to make the distinction. The transition was somewhat centered in the US and is also called the American folk music revival.
Contemporary folk music | Introduction
In the United Kingdom, the folk revival fostered a generation of singer-songwriters such as Donovan, who achieved initial prominence in the 1960s. The folk revival spawned Canada's first folk wave of internationally successful artists such as Gordon Lightfoot, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, and Buffy Sainte-Marie. Major performers who emerged from the 1940s to the early 1960s included Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan. The mid-1960s through the early 1970s was associated with large musical, political, lifestyle, and counterculture changes. Folk music underwent a related rapid evolution, expansion and diversification at that same time. Major changes occurred through the evolution of established performers such as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and Peter, Paul and Mary, and also through the creation of new fusion genres with rock and pop.
Contemporary folk music | Introduction
Perhaps the finest individual work in the genre was from early 1970s artists such as Nick Drake, Tim Buckley and John Martyn, but these can also be considered the first among the British 'folk troubadours' or 'singer-songwriters', individual performers who remained largely acoustic, but who relied mostly on their own individual compositions. The most successful of these was Ralph McTell, whose "Streets of London" reached number 2 in the UK Single Charts in 1974, and whose music is clearly folk, but without and much reliance on tradition, virtuosity, or much evidence of attempts at fusion with other genres.
British folk revival | Progressive folk
There was a strong nationalist element in the motivation for collecting folk song. As part of a general mood of growing nationalism in the period before the First World War, the Board of Education in 1906 officially sanctioned the teaching of folk songs in schools. One of the major effects of the folk song revival was the creation of a distinctive English form of classical music, known as the English "national" or "pastoral" school. Sharp, among others, promoted the revival of English folk music as a response to the commonly held view that English art music since the death of Henry Purcell had relied heavily on European composers and styles and was therefore indistinguishable from other national forms.
British folk revival | Revival and national identity
Nevertheless, the rhetoric of the United States government during the Cold War era was very powerful and in some ways overpowered the message of folk artists, such as in relation to public opinion regarding Communist-backed political causes. Various Gallup Polls that were conducted during this time suggest that Americans consistently saw Communism as a threat; for example, a 1954 poll shows that at the time 51% of Americans said that admitted Communists should be arrested, and in relation to music 64% of respondents said that if a radio singer is an admitted Communist he should be fired. Leading figures in the American folk revival such as Seeger, Earl Robinson and Irwin Silber were or had been members of the Communist Party, while others such as Guthrie (who had written a column for CPUSA magazine New Masses), Lee Hays and Paul Robeson were considered fellow travellers.
Music and politics | American folk revival
The second revival in Britain followed a similar movement in America, to which it was connected by individuals such as Alan Lomax, who had moved to Britain in the era of McCarthyism and who worked in England and Scotland. Unlike the first revival, which wholly concerned itself with traditional music, the second revival was a part of the birth of non-traditional contemporary folk music. Like the American revival, it was often overtly left wing in its politics, and the leading figures, the Salford-born Ewan MacColl and A. L. Lloyd, were both involved in trade unionism and socialist politics. Several individuals emerged in England who had learnt the old songs in the oral tradition from their communities and therefore preserved the authentic versions.
British folk revival | Nature of the revival
Though Appalachian and African American folk music became the basis for most of American popular music, the United States is home to a diverse assortment of ethnic groups. In the early 20th century, many of these ethnic groups supported niche record industries and produced minor folk stars like Pawlo Humeniuk, the "King of the Ukrainian Fiddlers" (Kochan and Kytasty, 308). Some of these ethnic musicians eventually became well-known across the country, such as Frankie Yankovic, the Slovenian polka master. This same period also saw the rise of Native American powwows around the start of the 20th century. These were large-scale intertribal events featuring spiritual activity and musical performances, mostly group percussion based (Means, 594).
Music history of the United States | Other forms of American roots music
Hays and Seeger had formerly sung together as the politically activist Almanac Singers, a group which they founded in 1941 and whose personnel often included Woody Guthrie, Josh White, Lead Belly, Cisco Houston, and Bess Lomax Hawes. The Weavers had a big hit in 1950 with the single of Lead Belly's "Goodnight, Irene". This was number one on the Billboard charts for thirteen weeks. On its flip side was "Tzena, Tzena, Tzena", an Israeli dance song that concurrently reached number two on the charts. This was followed by a string of Weaver hit singles that sold millions, including ""So Long It's Been Good to Know You" ("Dusty Old Dust") (by Woody Guthrie) and "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine".
American folk music revival | Early years
Native Americans were the earliest inhabitants of the land that is today known as the United States and played its first music. Beginning in the 17th century, immigrants from the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Germany and France began arriving in large numbers, bringing with them new styles and instruments. African slaves brought musical traditions, and each subsequent wave of immigrants contributes to a melting pot. Folk music includes both traditional music and the genre that evolved from it during the 20th century folk revival. The term originated in the 19th century but is often applied to music that is older than that.
Folklore of the United States | Folk music
This move was also significant in indicating the way in which electric folk personnel had become assimilated into the folk revival. It is notable that almost all the members of Fairport Convention have toured the folk club circuit solo or in smaller units and the line up at Cropredy includes as many acoustic acts as electric. In 1980, Steeleye Span's "Sails of Silver" took a decisive move away from traditional songs. It was a commercial failure and their last album for six years as they became a part-time touring band. However, in 1986 they produced "Back in Line" and since then, despite several band changes, they have continued to perform and have recorded eight more albums.
British folk rock | Resurgence 1985–present
'Shoals of Herring'. In the British folk rock movement of the 1970s industrial folk music was less prominent than traditional ballads, but largely accepted as part of folk music, with songs like 'Blackleg Miner' being recorded beside medieval ballads by leading bands of the genre like Steeleye Span.
Industrial folk music | The folk revival
The arrival and sometimes mainstream success of acts like Kate Rusby, Bellowhead, Nancy Kerr, Kathryn Tickell, Jim Moray, Spiers and Boden, Seth Lakeman, Frank Turner, Laura Marling and Eliza Carthy, all largely concerned with acoustic performance of traditional material, marked a radical turn around in the fortunes of the tradition. This was reflected in the adoption creation of the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2000, which gave the music a much needed status and focus and the profile of folk music is as high in England today as it has been for over thirty years.
English folk music | Traditional folk resurgence 1990-present
The process of fusion between American musical styles and English folk can also be seen as the origin of British progressive folk music, which attempted to elevate folk music through greater musicianship, or compositional and arrangement skills. Many progressive folk performers continued to retain a traditional element in their music, including Jansch and Renbourn, who with Jacqui McShee, Danny Thompson, and Terry Cox, formed Pentangle in 1967. Others totally abandoned the traditional element and in this area particularly influential were the Scottish artists Donovan, who was most influenced by emerging progressive folk musicians in America like Bob Dylan, and the Incredible String Band, who from 1967 incorporated a range of influences including medieval and eastern music into their compositions.
English folk music | Progressive folk
This movement was evident first in the USA where George Korson followed John Lomax's collection of the work songs of Cowboys with investigations of coal miner's songs, particularly from the Appalachians, from 1927. Despite reservations about these songs, whose authors were often known and so they did not fit into the mould of traditional music, after World War II folklorists largely accepted this music as folk song. Pete Seeger's Folkways LP "American Industrial Ballads" (1956) was an early survey of this kind of song. The American song collection of over 200 songs in "Hard Hitting Songs For Hard Hit People" by Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Alan Lomax in the 1940s (not published till 1967), explored worker's song further.
Industrial folk music | The folk revival
The most common name for this form of music is also "folk music", but is often called "contemporary folk music" or "folk revival music" to make the distinction. The transition was somewhat centered in the US and is also called the American folk music revival. Fusion genres such as folk rock and others also evolved within this phenomenon.
World music | Western
This Western music influence largely kept the music of the folk revival and folk rock from influencing the country music genre much, despite the similarity in instrumentation and origins (see, for instance, the Byrds' negative reception during their appearance on the "Grand Ole Opry"). The main concern was largely political: most folk revival was largely driven by progressive activists, a stark contrast to the culturally conservative audiences of country music. Only a handful of folk artists, such as Burl Ives and Canadian musician Gordon Lightfoot, would cross over into country music after the folk revival died out. During the mid-1950s a new style of country music became popular, eventually to be referred to as rockabilly.
Country music | Third generation (1950s–1960s)
By the late 1950s, a revival of Appalachian folk music was taking place across the country, and bands like The Weavers were paving the way for future mainstream stars like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. Bluegrass was similarly revitalized and updated by artists including Tony Rice, Clarence White, Richard Green, Bill Keith and David Grisman. The Dillards, however, were the ones to break bluegrass into mainstream markets in the early 1960s.
Music history of the United States in the 1950s | Roots revival
The success of the album and the single earned the Kingston Trio a Grammy award for Best Country & Western Performance at the awards' inaugural ceremony in 1959. At the time, no folk-music category existed in the Grammy's scheme. The next year, largely as a result of "The Kingston Trio" album and "Tom Dooley", the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences instituted a folk category and the Trio won the first Grammy Award for Best Ethnic or Traditional Folk Recording for its second studio album "At Large." At one point, The Kingston Trio had four records at the same time among the Top 10 selling albums for five consecutive weeks in November and December 1959 according to "Billboard Magazine's" "Top LPs" chart, a record unmatched for more than 50 years and noted at the time by a cover story in "Life Magazine".
American folk music revival | The revival at its height
In the 1930s, radio programs such as the Grand Ole Opry kept interest in Appalachian music alive, and collectors such as musicologist Alan Lomax continued to make field recordings in the region throughout the 1940s. In 1952, Folkways Records released the landmark "Anthology of American Folk Music", which had been compiled by ethnomusicologist Harry Smith, and contained tracks from Appalachian musicians such as Clarence Ashley, Dock Boggs, and G. B. Grayson. The compilation helped inspire the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s. Urban folk enthusiasts such as New Lost City Ramblers bandmates Mike Seeger and John Cohen and producer Ralph Rinzler traveled to remote sections of Appalachia to conduct field recordings.
Appalachian music | Folk revival
Industrial folk song overlapped with other forms of music from the late 19th century, such as Music hall and popular music and began to disappear as a genre from the mid-20th century as different forms of song provided alternatives and the decline of major industries began to undermine it. However, because of its political associations it has been revived, particularly in times of political and social upheaval such as the 1980s, when anarchist punk band Chumbawamba included several industrial work and protest songs on their "English Rebel Songs 1381-1914" album (1988) and the tradition was taken up by folk artists like Billy Bragg.
Industrial folk music | Decline and survival
By the 1960s, the scene that had developed out of the American folk music revival had grown to a major movement, using traditional music and new compositions in a traditional style, usually on acoustic instruments. In America the genre was pioneered by figures such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and often identified with progressive or labor politics. In the early sixties figures such as Joan Baez and Bob Dylan had come to the fore in this movement as singer-songwriters. Dylan had begun to reach a mainstream audience with hits including "Blowin' in the Wind" (1963) and "Masters of War" (1963), which brought "protest songs" to a wider public, but, although beginning to influence each other, rock and folk music had remained largely separate genres, often with mutually exclusive audiences.
Music history of the United States in the 1960s | Folk rock
Earliest American scholars were with The American Folklore Society (AFS), which emerged in the late 1800s. Their studies expanded to include Native American music, but still treated folk music as a historical item preserved in isolated societies. In North America, during the 1930s and 1940s, the Library of Congress worked through the offices of traditional music collectors Robert Winslow Gordon, Alan Lomax and others to capture as much North American field material as possible. Lomax was the first prominent scholar to study distinctly American folk music such as that of cowboys and southern blacks. His first major published work was in 1911, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, and was arguably the most prominent US folk music scholar of his time, notably during the beginnings of the folk music revival in the 1930s and early 1940s.
Folklore of the United States | Folk music
Proponents included Andy Stewart (1933–93), whose weekly programme "The White Heather Club" ran in Scotland from 1958 to 1967. Frequent guests included Moira Anderson (born 1938) and Kenneth McKeller (1927–2010), who enjoyed their own programmes. The programmes and their music were immensely popular, although their version of Scottish music and identity was despised by many modernists. The fusing of various styles of American music with British folk created a distinctive form of fingerstyle guitar playing known as folk baroque, pioneered by figures including Davy Graham and Bert Jansch. This led in part to British progressive folk music, which attempted to elevate folk music through greater musicianship, or compositional and arrangement skills.
Scottish folk music | Second revival
Australian music: Beginning in the 1980s, Australian Aborigines began turning to their native styles of folk music, which were updated, creating popular bands and styles like Aboriginal rock. Canadian music: Though some artists, like The Band, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, had been integral parts of the 1960s American folk rock scene, Canada has seen its own distinctive revival of styles. This includes the late 1970s scene in Maritime Canada, which glorified the area's Celtic heritage and was led by regional legends Figgy Duff and Stan Rogers, as well as the mid-1960s Quebecois revival led by Gilles Vigneault. There were also revivals of Acadian, Inuit and other folk styles.
Roots revival | English-speaking countries
This form of music is sometimes called contemporary folk music or folk revival music to distinguish it from earlier folk forms. Smaller, similar revivals have occurred elsewhere in the world at other times, but the term folk music has typically not been applied to the new music created during those revivals. This type of folk music also includes fusion genres such as folk rock, folk metal, and others. While contemporary folk music is a genre generally distinct from traditional folk music, in U.S. English it shares the same name, and it often shares the same performers and venues as traditional folk music.
Folk music | Introduction
The focus for revival performers of English country music became the style of their informants as much as their repertoire. Rather than a folk club a venue might be a remote country pub where revival and traditional musicians or singers would make music together in the bar. These were sometimes organised by revivalists like Ken Stubbs and Taffy Thomas who had developed real empathy with the older musicians. The polka dominated instrumental repertoire differed from the music that had been associated with English country dance up to this point. The term seems to have fallen out of regular use in favour of a more relaxed definition of "traditional" perhaps due to confusion with the better known but altogether different American country music.
English country music | Introduction
The large musical, political, lifestyle, and counterculture changes most associated with "the 60s" occurred during the second half of the decade and the first year or two of the 1970s. Folk music underwent a related rapid evolution, expansion and diversification at that same time. Major changes occurred through the evolution of established performers such as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, the Seekers and Peter Paul and Mary, and also through the creation of new fusion genres with rock and pop. Much of this evolution began in the early 1960s and emerged into prominence in the mid and late 1960s.
Contemporary folk music | The mid-1960s through the early 1970s
The expansion of the revival scene has been attributed to the short-lived British skiffle craze of 1956–58. Spearheaded by Lonnie Donegan’s hit "Rock Island Line" (1956) it dovetailed with the growth of café youth culture, where skiffle bands with acoustic guitars, and improvised instruments such as washboards and tea chest bass, played to teenage audiences. Beside the many later jazz, blues, pop and rock musicians that started performing in skiffle bands were a number of future folk performers, including Martin Carthy and John Renbourn. It also brought a greater familiarity with American roots music and helped expand the British folk club movement where American folk music also began to be played and which were an important part of the second revival.
British folk revival | Folk clubs
These were drawn on for the most influential collection, "The Scots Musical Museum", published in six volumes from 1787 to 1803 by James Johnson and Robert Burns, which also included new words by Burns. The "Select Scottish Airs" collected by George Thomson and published between 1799 and 1818 included contributions from Burns and Walter Scott. With the Industrial Revolution the process of social stratification was intensified and the themes of popular music began to change from rural and agrarian life to include industrial work songs. Awareness that older forms of song were being abandoned prompted renewed interest in collecting folk songs during the 1830s and 40s, including the work of William B.
British folk revival | Origins
Reconstructions of historical dances and new compositions continue. Interpreters and composers of the 20th century include Douglas and Helen Kennedy, Pat Shaw, Tom Cook, Ken Sheffield, Charles Bolton, Michael Barraclough, Colin Hume, Gary Roodman, and Andrew Shaw.
Country dance | Revival
One performance "crucible" for this evolution was Greenwich Village New York. Dylan's use of electric instruments helped inaugurate the genres of folk rock and country rock, particularly by his album "John Wesley Harding". These changes represented a further departure from traditional folk music. The Byrds with hits such as Seeger's "Turn! Turn! Turn!" were emblematic of a new term folk rock. Barry McGuire left the New Christy Minstrels and recorded "Eve of Destruction" in 1965. Other performers such as Simon & Garfunkel and the Mamas & the Papas created new, hard-to-classify music that was folk-inflected and often included in discussions of folk rock.
Contemporary folk music | The mid-1960s through the early 1970s
Jews have been involved in the American folk music scene since the late 19th century; these tended to be refugees from Central and Eastern Europe, and significantly more economically disadvantaged than their established Western European Sephardic coreligionists. Historians see it as a legacy of the secular Yiddish theater, cantorial traditions and a desire to assimilate. By the 1940s Jews had become established in the American folk music scene. Examples of the major impact Jews have had in the American folk music arena include, but are not limited to: Moe Asch the first to record and release much of the music of Woody Guthrie, including "This Land is Your Land" (see The Asch Recordings) in response to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America", and Guthrie wrote Jewish songs.
American Jews | American folk music