How to Appreciate Folk Rock

Folk rock combines two musical genres. It began in the early 1960s and grew quickly in popularity. The merging of folk and rock music was done seamlessly and created a musical phase that gave the British Invasion, surfing sound and Motown a run for their money.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• CDs by 60s favorites Bob Dylan, The Byrds, The Mamas and the Papas, Simon & Garfunkel, Donovan and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
• CDs by later folk rock offshoot artists such as Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, REM and Jewel

1. 
   Bob Dylan started it all

   Study folk artists such as Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. Listen to the music and the words. Only an electric guitar and a harder beat would be added to create folk rock.

2. Listen to early Bob Dylan. Though he played the acoustic guitar and harmonica, notice how his music began being influenced by rock and how rock was influenced by his music. When Dylan broke out the electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival, he was booed, but folk rock was born.

3. Appreciate how The Byrds adopted Dylan's work and popularized the genre. Roger McGuinn's unmistakable 12-string Rickenbacker guitar jingle-jangled through such classics as "Mr. Tamborine Man", "Turn, Turn, Turn" and "My Back Pages." The transformation from acoustic to electric guitar was complete.

4. Dissect the works of such 60s folk rock favorites as the Mamas and the Papas ("California Dreaming"), Simon and Garfunkel ("Sounds of Silence") Donovan ("Jennifer Juniper") and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young ("Woodstock").

5. Move forward to new wave, where groups such as Byrds-influenced Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers ("Listen to her Heart") and R.E.M. ("Losing my Religion") picked up where the sixties folk rock groups left off.

Tips & Warnings

• Expand your horizons. Check out The Band from the late 1960s and early 1970s to Jewel from a later generation. Try to understand where folk rock has been and where it is going. Are the messages the same? How has the music changed?