the.com/folk
the music of regular people, smuggling revolutions inside three chords and a true story
means Ordinary people considered as a group, or the traditional culture—music, tales, customs—that grows up among them rather than being handed down by institutions.
from An old Germanic word that has been with English since its earliest days, surfacing in Old English as 'folc' meaning a people or a host of fighting men. It has solid cousins across the Germanic family—German 'Volk' and Dutch 'volk' among them. The sense narrowed and warmed over centuries from 'a whole nation under arms' to simply 'the common people,' and by the 19th century scholars were stitching it onto words like 'folklore' and 'folk song' to mean the homemade culture of the many. Its plural 'folks' came to mean kin and neighbors, the people right around you.
- oral DNA
- Songs survived centuries with no sheet music
- protest fuel
- Soundtracked civil rights and anti-war movements
- guitar minimum
- Three chords and honesty beat virtuosity
- shapeshifter
- Every culture has its own folk tradition
- word origin
- From Old English meaning common people
appalachian folk music — traditional music from the appalachian mountains spanning centuries with roots in scottish, irish, and english ballads
newport folk festival — annual music festival in rhode island since 1959, where bob dylan went electric in 1965
folk high schools — residential schools in denmark and scandinavia since 1844, founded by nikolai grundtvig to educate rural populations