Folk vs. Country
Giuseppe Serpone
Hi there,
Here's a question my friends and I have been trying to answer for some
time. We are all relatively uninformed and have different opinions, so
I thought I'd ask you, the folk fans:
How do you explain the differences between folk and country music?
None of us know precisely why we say some songs are folk and others
are country, yet we all agree on which songs sound like country and
which sound like folk. For example, on Cheryl Wheeler's "Driving Home"
CD, we think "Don't Forget the Guns" is country and "Act of Nature" is
folk, but why?
I bet we could find dictionary definitions at our local library, but
we think it's much more informative to ask in this forum. I hope you
can help us out!
Lisa
-----------------------------
Lisa Minetti lm...@andrew.cmu.edu
Intercultural Communication Center Carnegie Mellon University
Fred and Dee Wolke
: ----- Posted form a friend's account-----
(snip, snip)
: How do you explain the differences between folk and country music?
: None of us know precisely why we say some songs are folk and others
: are country, yet we all agree on which songs sound like country and
: which sound like folk. For example, on Cheryl Wheeler's "Driving Home"
: CD, we think "Don't Forget the Guns" is country and "Act of Nature" is
: folk, but why?
Well, Lisa, IMHO it's not so much a _difference_ as a _continuum_. On
the one hand you have people who will only sing traditional songs and
play traditional tunes as handed down through generations (or their Child
ballad book, more's the pity), with acoustic instruments and no sound
mixing on the recordings, just take it as it comes. On the other hand
you have Travis Tritt and others of his ilk (don't mean to pick on Travis
but he was the one who came to mind) whose songs are written by
professional country hitmakers and have more echo than the Grand Canyon
and more orchestration than the average Bartok concerto. In the middle
you have folks like Cheryl Wheeler, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and others
like Jim Keelaghan, who write most of their own material but don't mind
doing a traditional song either, and who use tasteful arranging and
professional sound mixing and recording techniques. Folks range from one
end of it to the other.
Another thing is perhaps the subject matter of the songs themselves.
Folk songs tend to "mean" something, make a statement or a point (though
this is not an inviolable rule), whereas the more commercial country
songs tend to be about unfaithful lovers, parties, and trucks (yes, I
know I'm overgeneralizing, don't flame me please) even though there are
certainly exceptions to each rule -- one of the bigger country hits I've
heard in the last couple of years is "He Thinks He'll Keep Her", which is
a folk song in country clothing.
MY OPINION FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH:
I think the difference is much more in attitude than in objective
features. Folk music seems to me to have a much more "home made" feeling
to it, which can shine through the production and instruments or lack of
them. Lots of times, if you take the bells and whistles away from your
average country song, you have nothing but trash. A lot of country seems
empty to me, crassly commercial in the way power pop was in the 80's.
Just another way for the record labels to rip us off with mediocrity.
Off the soapbox now,
Dee
Bill Nash
many styles of both of these musics. The folk side has "traditional"
(a topic we have beaten to death), and several others I don't think
have names. But country music, that's where it gets really
complicated. You've got "new country", "traditional country", and
god knows what else.
Have at it.
Bill
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Olin Murrell
>How do you explain the differences between folk and country music?
>
There are probably a thousand different answers to this question, from
the folk nazi's interpretation that folk music can only be learned at
your grandfather's knee, to Big Bill Broonzy's assertion that "It's all
folk music. Horses don't write songs. Folks do."
>None of us know precisely why we say some songs are folk and others
>are country, yet we all agree on which songs sound like country and
>which sound like folk. For example, on Cheryl Wheeler's "Driving Home"
>CD, we think "Don't Forget the Guns" is country and "Act of Nature" is
>folk, but why?
>
For me, a songwriter who performs mainly in a folk style, but with jazz,
blues, country and rock influences, the only real difference between
country and folk is instrumentation and attitude. Both forms tell
stories. Both forms generally use fairly simple melodies and chord
structures. Many songs in both genre's can be performed as either, with
equal success. One example, "I'm No Stranger to the Rain," has a hard
driving groove as a country song, with several complete rhythm stops, but
it works equally well as a solo (guitar/vocal) "folk" song.
>I bet we could find dictionary definitions at our local library, but
>we think it's much more informative to ask in this forum. I hope you
>can help us out!
>
--
Olin Murrell
Austin, TX
ol...@bga.com
James McNeil
>----- Posted form a friend's account-----
>Here's a question my friends and I have been trying to answer for some
>time. We are all relatively uninformed and have different opinions, so
>I thought I'd ask you, the folk fans:
>How do you explain the differences between folk and country music?
Well, a partial explanation is that folk music originally meant music that
was passed along orally/aurally and modified by the "folk tradition."
(Folk tradition is similar to the "telephone game" where someone tells
someone, who repeats it to someone else, who repeats it...etc., and slight
variations come about.)
The roots of folk music originated in the British Isles; and the
African-American forms originated in western Africa, from where the
slaves were brought.
"Barbara Allen" and variations of "The Streets of Laredo" are examples of
folk songs originating in the British Isles. Country blues, the
Black folk music, such as "Matchbox Blues" and "Stone Pony Blues," are early
Blues songs which are considered also to be folk music.
Then in the 1960's came the "Folk Revival," protest songs, and commercial
folk groups such as Peter, Paul and Mary, the Kingston Trio, etc., and
singer-songwriters, as part of folk music.
Country music is based on folk roots. It was the "hillbilly" music from
the Appalachian area (which was settled mostly by Scottish and Irish
immigrants) and began out of the folk songs of the British Isles. It has
evolved into the popular music of the people of the southern and/or
rural regions of the United States and Canada.
There are several types of music that could actually fall under the category
of country music. One is the old-timey music (early string bands),
another is bluegrass, which was derived from the old-timey music (in the
1940's, by Bill Monroe) another is western swing (which originated in
Texas, by Bob Wills) which is a kind of "hillbilly jazz" music. There is
also the cowboy music, which forms the "western" part of the commercial
title "Country-Western." The Cajun, Zydeco and Norten~a musics are also
somewhat country-ish. (Perhaps some would rather categorize them as folk
music.)
Now I'll let someone else take over from there, and/or corrct me if they
disagree... :-)
Lianne
--
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Lianne or Jim McNeil Water those flowers you want to grow.
Harry Katz
be folk music because horses can't sing!"
Chris Natale
The line seems to even divide the country category between traditional
stuff ( from Hank Williams and Snow to Patsy Cline to Dwight Yoakam to the
Mavericks) and more "top 40 " crap (my opinion) such as Judds, B.R Cyrus,
etc.
Just a thought--
chris
Kevin Rolph
folk music by the attitude/character of the performer. If the performer
is happy contributing to (not *leading*) informal activities with
us ordinary people - then what they play/sing is "folk".
I don't know whether this happens with what is clearly "country" music.
I'd say "folk" implies "traditional" i.e. dating from past times,
at least in style. Folkiness [proportional to] Age, crudely.
--
Kevin Rolph, Cambridge, England. Bodhran player.
JLizKenn
of the best songwriters these days have a foot in each
camp, and that the commercial structure of the country
song is being adopted by so many of our folk-circuit-
performing songwriters: Hugh Moffatt, Cheryl Wheeler,
Nanci Griffith, Steve Key, Mark Elliott, and many others.
Look at the songs that win at Kerrville and Napa and other
"folk" showcases, and you'll find many of them being covered
on major-label country albums. Kathy Mattea, Suzy Boguss,
Chris LeDoux and many other country stars make it their business
to pay attention to what's happening on the folk stages and end
up covering many of the songs on their albums.
The songs I'm aware of that appear in both places do tend to be
excellent (I think), but I'm not sure how great it is for folk songwriters
to get preoccupied with catchy choruses and killer hooklines and
playtimes under 3-1/4 minutes. If you're a folk artist and you make a
lot of money with a country artist recording your song, it must be pretty
hard to hang onto what drew you to folk music in the first place
while trying to see if you can't replicate that first commercial success.
A friend of mind heard this addressed by the terrific country songwriter
Bob McDill, who said that he continued to write different kinds of songs,
some commercial and some more personal and private:
some to sell, some to keep, and some to give away.
--Joan