History of Folk Music

Series Summary

“Folk music” can be used to describe any traditional music of a culture or group of people (folks). In today’s America, the term has come to designate a particular genre associated with the American folk revival of the 1950s and 60s, pioneered by musicians like Joan Baez, Woody Guthrie, and Bob Dylan. This genre borrowed from English and Scots-Irish ballads a lyrical quality and simple structure, easily adapted to the guitars and grassroots resistance movements of that time period. Paul Simon also reintroduced English finger-picking and vocal techniques to the American sound being created in the 1960s. Many fans of folk music, including folk rock and progressive folk music, adamantly distinguish “folk” from “country” in the American music scene. An important distinction.

In this free video series Cody Kimmel will teach you the basics of writing folk songs. This comprehensive series will show you how to set up the song, from chord structures popular in American folk music, to rhyme schemes borrowed from traditional European ballads and brought to America centuries ago. Cody teaches you how to keep your ears and eyes open, always ready for inspiration to hit. He leads you through writing a folk verse, chorus, and bridge, and then shows you how to put it all together. Get your folk on here!

Video Transcript

"CODY KIMMEL: Hi. My name is Cody Kimmel, and I'm the lead singer of the band Eliot Fitzgerald, and I'm here with Expert Village to teach you how to write a folk song. Now, in beginning to write a folk song, before we begin anything, before write anything down, before we come up with any chords, melody, anything like that, the most important--not one of--not the most important but an important part of songwriting is understanding the history of the genre in which you're writing for. For a folk song, the history of folk is a very important part of writing folk songs. "Folk" is an interesting category of music. It's an interesting genre in that it is a genre almost built around the concept of irony. When you listen musically to folk, it's very soft, it has oftentimes very happy and sunny melodies, there's nothing harsh or bitter. It's the actual sound in music of folk music; however, when you take into account the history and the content of folk music, you'll see that it is actually quite the opposite of the feeling that you normally get when you're listening to folk music. And it's very harsh and it's based on a history of protest. When you look at the beginning and the roots of folk music, which with Woody Guthrie and other musicians like that, growing up and really developing a very strong Americana-type songwriting style, and then progressing through the 60s with Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel and different people like that, you'll really see that folk music and if you're going to write a folk song, the history of folk music is protest. The history of folk music is counterculture, and that's what's going to distinguish oftentimes a folk song from a country song from a lot of other songs like that. Folk music (more than just a musical style) is a musical genre based and rooted with its history in protest."