Folk music originated from many cultures around the world. Each culture adopted rhythms and beats from family and cultural rituals. The family of string instruments applied the music with common harmonies. Other variations of instruments, from homemade to daily items were used in addition to create a more original beat. The region of Great Britain, or the Celtic race inspired many of today’s top beats in folk music . The music originated among the common people of a nation passing it down orally, often changing for artist’s personal design.
The meaning of folk in a musical term describes the common, but original creation intended for personal enjoyment such as ballads or music that represents people with particular occupations or in certain circumstances. In the 1960’s folk music blended with mainstream music, as the Baby Boomers came of age all at once. The music of the folk revival was narrative pop music with a social conscience. Since then community-driven musical forms such as punk rock, hip-hip have evolved. Now, in the 21st century, folk music has strong influences from all of these musical movements.
Folk songs can often be classified into different types. For example, the ballad, a song that tells a story often about real events, is one of the main types of folk songs. Ballads are in stanza form, where a melody is repeated for each of several verses, and may have a refrain that is repeated several times. Another type of folk song represents people that deal with a particular activity, occupation, or set of circumstances. This group includes work songs, prison songs, war songs, and the like.
There are also spiritual songs, songs for children, songs about life’s stages, and many songs are just for celebration, dance and enjoyment. Throughout ages music was made by common people during both their work and leisure. During the era of much bigger manual labor people often included singing, which helped them with several practical purposes. It reduced the boredom of repetitive tasks and kept the rhythm during synchronized pushes and pulls and it set paste such as planting, weeding, reaping, threshing, weaving and milling.
In leisure time, singing and playing musical instruments were common forms of entertainment. The first people to use the term “folk music” were 18th century Europeans, and they used it exclusively to refer to their own music. They contended that Americans had no folk music because we didn’t have that long a history. Then and English folk song collector went to Appalachia in the late 19th century and found such old English folk songs as Barbara Allen”
However, the terms folk music, folk song, and folk dance, are comparatively recent expressions. Since, it is an extension of the term folk lore, which was coined in 1846 by the English antiquarian William Thoms. The idea was to describe the traditions, customs, and superstitions of the uncultured classes. The term is further derived from the German expression Volk, in the sense of “the people as a whole” as applied to popular and national music by Johann Gottfried Herder and the German Romantics over century earlier.
