Folk History: A Turning Point or Two

American folk music stems from many different styles and cultures, largely because of the "melting pot" quality of American society. The first traditional folk music in the country was Native American, and after that a wave of Spanish swirled around the southern parts of the country. European influences, specifically British, worked their ways west from the Eastern seaboard. French drifted down from what would become Canada. A different type of French, stemming from the sugar plantations of the Caribbean, slipped through the port of New Orleans and colored the southeast. All these mixed together to create a mishmash of music known as American folk. Like protest music, American folk music seems fairly indefinable. "I know it when I hear it," many people say. But what do we really mean by this?

In any other country, folk music would mean traditional music, old music, music of the culture and the heritage, music that women sang to cradles at night, music with which children learned to be functioning members of their selected societies. In America, however, this is not quite the case. Indeed, the "public domain" music that stems from traditional sources is one type of folk music. But it is not the only one.

Pete Seeger suggests that all music that is put forth with an artist's name linked to it is not folk music at all. However, in America there is certainly a folk-music 'genre' and a folky sound associated with certain musicians and their music. Some musicians labeled as folk, such as Dar Williams, don't even play old music at all - they play their own compositions.

So why, then, are they labeled folk? It has to do with the sound of the music, most musicologists agree. Artists labeled 'folk' often have a very traditional sound, breaking few of the established rules of Western music. For instance, most folk music, both traditional and "new folk," follows the root/third/fifth chord pattern and stays away from diminished chords at all cost. With notable exeptions, we can even say that 75% of music labeled "folk" has a G/C/D pattern or a slightly modified equivalent. This contributes greatly to the "I know it when I hear it" mentality regarding folk music. Many of these songs "sound the same," which means if you've heard one, a second will seem more familiar than it really is. This is both a help and a hindrance to musicians attempting to use this sound and art form. Familiarity with the sound will attract faithful listeners, but at the same time, musicians don't want a bored audience. Which is one reason why lyrics are so important in folk music - not only was folk music meant to teach lessons and explain events, but strong poetry within the language helped/helps to distinguish one song from another.

The sound of folk music is easy to spot for other, less technical, reasons. For one, many folk musicians prefer to play with limited accompaniment, usually just a guitar or another stringed instrument, or in some cases a piano, and maybe a few drums. Large accompaniment has never been a priority for folk musicians, whose focus has been on poetry and catchy melodies, which are best conveyed through a single instrument and a human voice. Simple harmonies and "round" songs, such as Tom Chapin's This Pretty Planet also help lend an air of complexity to an otherwise simple musical form. Folk music had to be simple so that farmers, loggers, and backcountry workers could pick it up easily and use music as a way to relax after a long day.

Some musicologists, though not the general American populace, also place country-western music in with folk music. They do this because backwater folk gave birth to country. They are no longer, however, the same genre. Calling country music folk would be like calling Americans British. Country evolved from folk. The difference now lies in both sound and subject. Folk music is sparse and catchy in sound, where country can either be sparse or very full and rich, with brass instruments and even symphonic winds. Country also has a definable "twang," whereas most folk has lost this in an attempt to become more mainstream and distant from country. And while country music can glorify the world in which we live, mostly it speaks of the earth as something to use or tame. While folk music is the root system of America, country music has retained much of the ideals that went into shaping this vast country a hundred and fifty years ago, when pioneers set out across the vast landscape to find their fortunes.

Folk Artists: Then and Now

Because of protest music's close ties to folk music, many folk musicians had dual roles as protest musicians. Some of the most important protest musicians with ties to the environmental movement are detailed below.

• Buffalo Springfield - Buffalo Springfield epitomized the protest music scene, the turbulent decade of the 1960's. As one biographer put it, "In 1967, the Buffalo Springfield captured the restless, confrontational mood of that generation railing against the establishment and went on to be revered as one of...music's most influential groups" (Einarson & Furay). Their song For What It's Worth "[has] come to symbolize the turbulent decade of the 1960s. Employed in virtually every documentary, television special, and feature film (including Forrest Gump and Oliver Stone's Born On The Fourth Of July) chronicling that era in America, For What It's Worth has transcended the pop charts to become an anthem, a touchstone for an entire generation" (Einarson & Furay).
• Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan, arguably one of the most important American musicians, no matter the genre, began his career as a folksinger along the lines of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. He was "discovered" after moving to Greenwich Village, New York City, which was the hub of subversive political activity and art in the 1950's and 1960's. His first album was comprised mostly of "public domain" folk music, traditional music with no apparent composer or lyricist. He included two of his own compositions, including the sentimental Song to Woody, an ode to the incomparable Woody Guthrie. After these original songs were well-received, he began composing in earnest, and to date has become one of the most prolifent American musicians of the last century. Some of his most famous songs include The Times, They Are A-Changing; Blowing in the Wind; Chimes of Freedom; Mr. Tambourine Man; All Along the Watchtower; Mr. Bojangles and Highway 61 Revisited.
• Pete Seeger - Famous until this recent generation, Pete Seeger was one of the great American troubadours (traveling musicians), eclipsed on the folk scene perhaps by only Woody Guthrie. Pete Seeger started out as an amateur banjo player and a music historian, using the newly-mastered technology of the magnetized audio tape in the 1930's and 1940's to record the "old-timey" folk songs of the Appalachian and Ozark mountains, backcountry places where tradition hails back to the founding of the nation. He founded several folk music revival bands and several publications including the famous Sing Out! periodical that ran for many years. Alternately loved and hated by the government, accused of subversive and Communist activity, and hailed as the true American musician, Pete Seeger has had a full and distinguished career. Among the songs he both wrote and re-wrote from old folk tunes are Where Have All the Flowers Gone, (Turn, Turn, Turn) To Everything There is a Season, If I Had a Hammer, Well May the World Go, and Garbage.
• Peter, Paul & Mary - Peter, Paul & Mary got their start in the 1950's and are still going strong, singing the songs they love to sing. Like Seeger and Guthrie, they started singing traditional public-domain folk songs, and also well-known protest songs of the times, including songs by giants such as John Denver and Bob Dylan. They also began recording their own music, and outside of their musical careers they used their fame to protest and lobby for civil rights, environmental rights, and other issues they found important. Peter says, "[W]e are all living with oceans that are no longer safe and under skies that are no longer unpolluted. No naïve response such as ‘taking cover’ under one’s desk, the way we did in elementary school during nuclear attack drills, makes any sense. We’re at a global saturation point, which is creating the impetus for new political advocacies. Such times of crisis have inevitably brought ‘music of conscience’ to the fore and I expect we will be hearing more and more of it in the immediate future. When people feel empowered to come together and raise their voices, also will mean raising their voices in song as well." Famous Peter, Paul & Mary songs with environmental themes include The Coming of the Roads, Power; Somos el Barco, El Salvador, and There But For Fortune.
• Dar Williams - Dar is a "youngster" on the folk scene, and one of the "new" artists labeled "folk" though she plays mostly her own compositions. Dar was born and raised in New England, and much of her material comes from people she met and places she went while growing up. Going to a small, intensely political and left-wing liberal arts college during the tumult of the 1970's also shaped her into the artist she is today. She sings largely about social issues, about love for one another, about the little things that stir in us emotion and recognition. She is an activist for peace, for environmental awareness, and for tolerance groups nationwide. Famous Dar songs with environmental themes include The Great Unknown, Play the Greed; Bought and Sold, Southern California Wants to Be Western New York, and Oh Canada Girls.
• Woody Guthrie - One of the great American legends, Woody Guthrie was and continues to be a common name in American music history. Beginning in the 1930's and traveling up unti his death, Guthrie was nearly single-handedly responsible for the resurgence of folk music as a form of expression in this century. Convinced of the merits of old songs, Woody Guthrie made a name for himself traveling across the country and singing to groups of people. He sang to logging camps and mining outfits, to trade unions, to students. He encouraged people to sing along. Says Guthrie about his own work: "I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you." Famous Woody Guthrie songs with environmental themes include This Land is Your Land, Red River Valley, and California Stars.
• John Denver - John Denver is not what anyone would call an activist for anything but good music. But he has written a lot of folk songs in his time, played more traditional music, and is still a long-standing favorite with the over-forty crowd. John Denver is also a good example of a musician who walks the line between folk and country. While he defines himself as country, many musicians and musicologists would probably define him as folk because, while he has the country "twang" he doesn't employ it all the time. He sings about the "country" the way country-western singers do, and he was instrumental in creating the genre, but it has now outgrown its creator. Famous John Denver songs include Thank God I'm a Country Boy, Take Me Home Country Roads, and Sweet Baby James.

Environmental Involvement

Because folk music is so intrinsically tied to the land, it's no surprise that its artists should be on the forefront of the environmental movement. The themes of folk are social change, the land, the family, and personal communion with nature.

Folk music has an older feel to it than protest, and herein lies the difference between the two. Folk music slowly wears down the pillars of injustice through story, parable, and metaphor while protest music is oftentimes an editorial put to song. Environmental messages are a little harder to find when they are not immediately spelled out, as with protest music. But it doesn't take much looking to see what's underneath the surface of this deceptively simple-seeming musical genre.

Dar Williams' The Great Unknown for example, is a metaphoric remembrance of the 1950's, when atomic energy was a new technology and Americans were still reeling from the fact that their government had dropped a secret, devastating nuclear bomb on two separate cities in Japan less than five years previous. The Great Unknown draws parallels between nuclear technology and what Americans call a nuclear family: mother, father, brother, sister. The breakup of the American family and the tearing apart of the atom are set side by side in this song, but never actually called evil. This is the difference between folk and protest.

So we walked out into the gamma fields out in Mercury, Nevada
And I stood in a circle, and that circle started to pray.
Now the wind at the nuclear test site floats the data of the radiation
From the undergroud testing - cross the line, you'll get arrested.
And we came from all over with a silent appeal
As the drill comes down like a presidential seal
And we stand for the living, and we stand for the dead
And we looked out to see your enemies, and we see that you're looking at us instead.

And you think I am being distructive?
But no, I'm running home, I'm running
Because I'm trying to put the atom back together, it's the great unknown.
I'm just trying to put the atom back together. It's the great unknown.

Taking care of the environment was for folk musicians no new radical departure from life as they already knew it. Life centered around the environment, and they had to keep it healthy in order to stay healthy themselves. Now that the "new wave" of folk is upon us, the traditions of the old have trickled into the new, influencing the direction of the lyrics and ideas even while giving up the old way of life.

Musical Samples

Instructions: Right-click and choose "Save Target As" to download file samples. All music files are saved in .zip format; use a program such as WinZip to unzip the files.

Not all of these songs are necessarily environmental in nature, but they are samples of the folk music genre. Songs with (*) indicate a particular emphasis on environmental themes.