Folk & Acoustic Music

Welcome to the pick n parlor! We are dedicated to folk music and acoustic style music. Here you will find a resource of folk and acoustic music, folk music artists and some of their music. At times you will also find some news from new folk music bands and acoustic artists. PineyWoodsPicknParlor.com provide quality information about the world of folk music, folk music artists, acoustic music, acoustic artists and slight variations of this popular genre. We hope you enjoy the “pick n parlor”.

Folk music can have a number of different meanings, but most commonly refers to Traditional music. The original meaning of the term "folk music" was synonymous with the term "Traditional music", also often including World Music and Roots music; the term "Traditional music" was given its more specific meaning to distinguish it from the other definitions that "Folk music" is now considered to encompass.

Folk music can also describe a particular kind of popular music which is based on traditional music. In contemporary times, this kind of folk music is often performed by professional musicians. Related genres include folk rock, electric folk and progressive folk music.

Charles Seeger (1980) describes three contemporary defining criteria of folk music:

1. A "schema comprising four musical types: 'primitive' or 'tribal'; 'elite' or 'art'; 'folk'; and 'popular'. Usually...folk music is associated with a lower class in societies which are culturally and socially stratified, that is, which have developed an elite, and possibly also a popular, musical culture." Cecil Sharp (1907)?, A.L. Lloyd (1972).

2. "Cultural processes rather than abstract musical types...continuity and oral transmission...seen as characterizing one side of a cultural dichotomy, the other side of which is found not only in the lower layers of feudal, capitalist and some oriental societies but also in 'primitive' societies and in parts of 'popular cultures'." Redfield (1947) and Dundes (1965).

3. Less prominent, "a rejection of rigid boundaries, preferring a conception, simply of varying practice within one field, that of 'music'."

Folk songs are commonly seen as songs that express something about a way of life that exists now or existed in the past or about to disappear (or in some cases, to be preserved or somehow revived). However, despite the assembly of an enormous body of work over some two centuries, there is still no certain definition of what folk music (or folklore, or the folk) is.

Gene Shay, co-founder and host of the Philadelphia Folk Festival, defined folk music in an April 2003 interview by saying: "In the strictest sense, it's music that is rarely written for profit. It's music that has endured and been passed down by oral tradition. Also, what distinguishes folk music is that it is participatory—you don't have to be a great musician to be a folk singer. And finally, it brings a sense of community. It's the people's music."

Classical Meets folk

There was a vogue for folk music during the start of the Romantic period. One of the first to use it was Josef Haydn (see Haydn and folk music). Beethoven made arrangements of Irish, Welsh and Scottish folk songs (over 150 settings) (see List of compositions by Ludwig van Beethoven).

Later composers used the material more liberally. Liszt, Brahms, Bruch, Tchaikovsky and Dvorak wrote folk dances that are often indistinguishable from tunes that come from the authentic tradition. Percy Grainger particularly enjoyed Morris dance tunes, and made many keyboard settings of them.

Ralph Vaughan Williams made choral arrangements of English folk songs. Holst composed pseudo-folk dance tunes, as did Malcolm Arnold. Benjamin Britten made voice-and-piano arrangements of folk songs, though the chromatic harmonisation probably makes them hard for a folk enthusiast to enjoy.