Folk Music

I

Introduction

Folk Music, music that is transmitted orally (handed down through performance rather than with notation, and learned by hearing). It is composed by individuals who remain anonymous or, at any rate, are not remembered by name. Folk music is found in most of the world's societies, and it exists in different guises and under a variety of social and cultural conditions. Emphasis in this article is on the folk music of Western nations, but variety is so great that the statements giving locations and characterizations are illustrative rather than comprehensive.

II

Relation to the Community

Performed by members of the folk community who are not highly trained musical specialists, folk music is often closely associated with the calendrical cycle and with key events in a person's life as well as with such activities as ritual, work, and child-rearing. Folk music is said to be the music of largely rural, untutored masses in societies where an educated, economic, political, as well as musical, elite also exists, the music of the latter, by contrast, being called “classical” or “art music”.

When a folk song is passed from singer to singer, it tends to undergo change arising from creative impulses, faulty memory, the aesthetic values of those who learn and teach it, and the influence of the styles of other musics known to the singers. A folk song thus develops variants, gradually changing—perhaps beyond recognition—and existing in many forms. Since many people participate in determining the shape of a song, this process is called communal recreation. Folk music is normally affected by the art music of nearby cultural centres (for example, cities, courts, monasteries), and it frequently functions as a kind of cultural backwater that retains characteristics of older art music for long periods. Folk music may also be defined as the music with which an ethnic community most closely identifies itself. It is music that generally flourishes outside institutions such as school and church.

Although this picture of folk music is basically correct, particularly for the rural cultures of Western Europe before the 20th century, many exceptions to this model must be noted. The boundaries between folk and other kinds of music are not clear. Songs from the realm of classical music are sometimes adapted by the folk community. Popular music, developed in urban cultures and transmitted through the mass media, bears some of the characteristics of folk music. Folk cultures sometimes develop musical specialists, particularly instrumentalists and singers of lengthy epics. The words of folk songs may be passed on through written or printed tradition, even if the music is oral.

Although something like folk music exists in many cultures that also possess a learned musical tradition, for example, India, China, and the Middle East, its role in society and among other kinds of music varies. Thus, in India, a sharper line is drawn than in the West between classical and folk music, while in the Middle East, a musician is likely to participate in both folk and classical genres. In Iran, folk music is called “regional music”, and it is performed by musicians who are actually more specialized than those of the classical tradition. The term folk music is not accurately used to describe the music of cultures that have no musical stratification, that is, no classical music as a contrast. In general, folk music is known by the way it is taught and learned, by its relative simplicity, and by its association with an ethnic or national group.

III

Musical Structure

Although the folk musics of European cultures vary enormously, they share some general characteristics. The music is relatively simple, usually consisting of songs with strophic forms; that is, a short stanza is repeated with different words, several or many times. The most common stanza type has four lines, sometimes all different (ABCD), but more frequently with some repetition (AABA, ABBA, and so on). The use of antiphony, or alternation between a leader and a chorus, each singing one line or stanza, is common throughout Europe. Much instrumental folk music presents successions of lines, each repeated or varied once (AABBCCDD or AA’BB’, and so on). Epic songs, with great emphasis on telling a complex story, may repeat a single musical line many times. Although the composers are unschooled, the ways of relating musical materials are often sophisticated. Thus, in Central and Eastern Europe, the technique of transposition (repeating a line at different pitch levels) is widespread, as in a typical Hungarian form in which the second half repeats the first a fifth lower (A⁵A⁵AA).

The melodic material of European folk music is closely related to that of art music. Seven-tone scales, sometimes using tonalities and modes (like those of medieval church music), are widely used. The Dorian and Mixolydian modes are common in English folk song; the Phrygian, in Spanish. Especially common throughout Europe are pentatonic scales, which consist of five notes: the most common type is arranged like the black keys of the piano. More simple scales with three or four notes are found in children's ditties, counting-out rhymes, and songs of pre-Christian rituals.

Rhythm is sometimes related to versification (the metric structure of poetry). English folk song texts frequently use lines of four iambic feet, and the accompanying melodies are often set in one of three rhythmic patterns:

In Eastern Europe, complex rhythms such as 2+2+2+3 beats, as well as measures of five, seven, eleven, and thirteen beats, may be found, particularly in the Balkan countries. Instrumental folk music tends to be rhythmically repetitive, a characteristic that may also be found in Central Europe, where complex structures—such as the irregular alternation of four and three beats in Bavarian dances—are used.

Most folk music is monophonic, unaccompanied melody. Instrumental accompaniment may provide simple chords or, frequently, a drone (one note or chord repeated under a melody). Polyphonic singing, with two or three voices pursuing independent melodies, is found particularly in Germany and Austria, Italy, Spain, the Balkans, and other Central and Eastern European countries. Most frequently, singers relate the voices to one another by singing the same tune at different pitch levels—in thirds or sixths (Germany, Italy, Spain, the Western Slavic countries); fourths or fifths (Russia, Ukraine); or seconds (the Balkans). Drones (Italy), rounds or canons (universal), and more complex relationships (Russia, the Balkans) are also known. Polyphonic folk music is rare in Asia; in some countries such as Iran and Afghanistan, however, polyphony is more common in folk music than in classical music.

A striking contrast between folk and art music is in the use of the voice and the tone colour of instruments. The bel canto style of lyrical, smoothly phased singing is rarely used. In each culture or area, a characteristic vocal sound has been developed and is favoured. In areas of Spain, Italy, and the Balkans, a tense, nasal sound and highly ornamented melodies are used. In Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Russia, a more open-throated, clear sound and unembellished melodies are preferred. A mixed style lying between the two is found in industrialized regions, including parts of Britain and France. Similarly, folk fiddlers do not use the vibrato or the slurred method of bowing of concert violinists, but instead give each note a fresh stroke of the bow. In US folk music, singing style is the primary element that distinguishes among eastern, western, southern, and black American traditions.

IV

The Songs

The style traits described above characterize regions and countries. The folk tunes themselves, while developing variants, usually also remain in their homelands. Occasionally, however, they pass from one country to another, their style changing in the process. A song may be sung solo in one country, and its variant may be choral in another. It may be pentatonic in one and use the major scale in another. Indeed, very similar tunes are found in nations as far apart as Spain and Hungary, but in each country the tune reflects the local style. This may be the result of the diffusion of tunes, or of the existence of a standardized way of composing that is bound to produce similar tunes sometimes. The relationship of similar tunes in far-apart communities cannot be traced.

Nevertheless, among the thousands of folk tunes known in one country, it is possible to identify those that appear to be related. They all seem to have come from a single parent tune through the process of oral tradition and communal recreation. A group of such related tunes is called a tune family. Although many folk tunes are centuries old, most of the versions now known come from records or printed collections rarely more than a hundred years old. Comparisons of these variants can reveal how a tune family may have developed. Tunes may be shortened; for example, when the four-line “Pretty Mohea” of Anglo-American tradition became “On Top of Old Smoky”, it seems to have lost its first two lines. A shortened version may then have new lines added. In the interior of a musical line, the second of two contrasting bits of melody may be forgotten and replaced by a repetition of the first. A tune may borrow a line from a completely unrelated family; thus, in Czech folk songs, which often use the form AABA, the line B may move to other tunes as an independent unit.

The number of tune families in a given folk music repertory seems to vary greatly. Hungarian folk music seems to have hundreds. The American scholar Samuel Bayard stated in 1950 that Anglo-American folk music is dominated by some 40 or 50 families, of which 7 account for the vast majority. In Iran, each genre of text, such as songs about heroic warlords, or songs about the martyrdom of Muslim holy men, seems to be associated with one type of melody; thus, the total number of families is very small.

A set of words such as a ballad, with its characteristic story, may be sung consistently with one tune and its variants. Typically, however, it will sometimes also be sung to tunes from several families, and the various members of a tune family will be sung to a variety of texts. Because these texts, such as ballad stories, diffuse, they are held in common by a number of countries in Europe and the Americas; the same is true of members of a tune family. The two do not, however, usually move together. The ballad “Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight”, common in English folk music, is found all over Europe, but in each country it is sung to a distinct group of tunes.

The large number of tunes in a typical folk music repertory is the basis for various systems of tune classification. Because oral tradition is so unpredictable, what remains constant when a tune is changed differs markedly from culture to culture. For these and other reasons, no satisfactory way has yet been developed to classify all the tunes that are generically related members of one family. In English folk song, for example, contour (the general outline of melodic movement) remains constant, whereas in Hungarian folk music, the consistent elements are the rhythm and the configuration of final notes of the several (usually four) phrases.