Folk Music: A Very Short Introduction

Very Short Introductions #257

by Mark Slobin

When we think of folk music, most of us picture Pete Seeger singing "This Land is My Land" or Joan Baez singing "Barbara Allen." But this stimulating Very Short Introduction throws open the doors on a remarkably diverse musical genre, in a wide-ranging portrait that goes far beyond America's shores to discuss folk music of every possible kind and in every corner of the globe. Written by award-winning musicologist Mark Slobin, this is the first compact introduction to folk music that offers a truly global perspective. Slobin offers an extraordinarily generous portrait of folk music, one that embraces a Russian wedding near the Arctic Circle, a group song in a small rainforest village in Brazil, and an Uzbek dance tune in Afghanistan. He looks in detail at three poignant songs from three widely separated regions--northern Afghanistan, Jewish Eastern Europe, and the Anglo-American world--with musical notation and lyrics included. And he also describes the efforts of scholars who
fanned out across the globe, to find and document this ever-changing music.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, History, Folklore

144 pages, Paperback

First published December 16, 2010

About the author

Mark Slobin was a professor at Wesleyan University for 45 years in its renowned ethnomusicology program.
He wrote books on music in Afghanistan and Central Asia, the Eastern European Jews (immigrants, cantors, klezmer), 2 of which won the prestigious ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award, global film music, and folk music.
A native Detroiter, he has written the first-ever survey of a major American city's musics, from the European, Appalachian, and African American immigrants to the worlds of classical music, the auto industry, the unions, the counterculture, and the media. His own memoirs and his family's music set the tone for the writing of "Motor City Music: A Detroiter Looks Back," published by Oxford University Press in November, 2018.

Reviews

[W · Rating 3 out of 5]

provided an expansive view of folk music, one global and somewhat amorphous. maybe not amorphous, but in flux, evolving. also offered a historical framework for understanding contemporary american folk music, the kind of folk music I was seeking to understand. my intentions for reading this weremn, therefore, generally fulfilled, albeit tangentially. the focus is not contemporary american folk. look elsewhere for a substantial treatment of that partivualr form of folk.

[kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This little introduction to the study of folk music was exactly what I wanted it to be: a high level overview, but not so abstract that it didn't have interesting examples.

One of my favorites was a particular African culture in which each person in the community has a song. When the musicians play your song, you go over and groove to the music while having a little exchange with the musicians, at the end of which you drop a few dollars on their instrument. How fun is that!? It reminded me that there are so many ways a culture can use music.

Also shocking was that in Afghanistan, playing music is considered a rather low-brow thing to do (or at least in one particular people group -- forgot which). For that reason, the author, an ethnomusicologist who did most of his research there, had a hard time just getting a person to ADMIT that he was a musician!

One of my favorite parts was the discussion about YouTube. He started by taking a single song and doing an analysis of it throughout time: the American folk song "Old Paint." The earliest recordings are of people from a century ago singing it and explaining the origin story. Of course, in those days, you only heard and learned music live, so there was inevitable regional variation: the origin story and style you hear from a singer in Texas was different from the one in Wyoming.

Next, the song gets included in "The American Songbag," a collection by folk musicologist Carl Sandburg, and gatherings all over the nation can buy the book and play a now-standardized version. Later, in the era of mass music production, listeners may learn the song as it is covered by famous stars, such as Linda Ronstadt. And today? A young woman might record herself singing and playing the song on guitar and shares it on YouTube. And in a strange way, the global public platform of YouTube allows a return to some aspects of folk: its homemade intimacy, its creation and perpetuation by amateurs.

I thought of this story when I watched an amazing group of three brothers play bluegrass on YT. All from New Jersey with no real-life exposure to bluegrass music, they learned about it online and got really into it. The youngest is a banjo virtuoso who, along with his brothers, has been profiled in music news.

While I certainly don't hope the light of the campfire gets replaced with the light of a computer screen, I think I have a better appreciate for the role of both in the development of folk music and music in general.

[Daniel Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chapter 1: Overview: sound and setting
Chapter 2: Close-ups: songs, strums, and ceremonies
Chapter 3: Intellectual intervention: scholars and bureaucrats
Chapter 4: Collecting and circulating: recording and distributing
Chapter 5: Internal upsurge: movements and stars
Chapter 6: Folk music today and tomorrow

[Patrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is nothing more mediated and artificial then the idea of folk music. The only way out of the trap is to think in terms of community music, with community defined openly, irrespective of geography, ethnicity, cultural background and commercial aspirations.

This book was written as a rambling discourse, no real structure provided to identify and work through the salient points.