Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted orally, music with unknown composers, music that is played on traditional instruments, music about cultural or national identity, music that changes between generations, music associated with a people's folklore, or music performed by custom over a long period of time. It has been contrasted with commercial and classical styles. The term originated in the 19th century, but folk music extends beyond that.
Alan Lomax was an American ethnomusicologist, best known for his numerous field recordings of folk music of the 20th century. He was also a musician himself, as well as a folklorist, archivist, writer, scholar, political activist, oral historian, and film-maker. Lomax produced recordings, concerts, and radio shows in the US and in England, which played an important role in preserving folk music traditions in both countries, and helped start both the American and British folk revivals of the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s. He collected material first with his father, folklorist and collector John Lomax, and later alone and with others, Lomax recorded thousands of songs and interviews for the Archive of American Folk Song, of which he was the director, at the Library of Congress on aluminum and acetate discs.
"Kum ba yah" is an African American spiritual song of disputed origin, but known to be sung in the Gullah culture of the islands off South Carolina and Georgia, with ties to enslaved West Africans. The song is thought to have spread from the islands to other Southern states and the North, as well as other places in the world. The first known recording, of someone known only as H. Wylie, who sang in the Gullah dialect, was recorded by folklorist Robert Winslow Gordon in 1926. It later became a standard campfire song in Scouting and summer camps and enjoyed broader popularity during the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s.
John Avery Lomax was an American teacher, a pioneering musicologist, and a folklorist who did much for the preservation of American folk music. He was the father of Alan Lomax, John Lomax Jr. and Bess Lomax Hawes, also distinguished collectors of folk music.
Joseph C. Hickerson is a folk singer and songleader. A graduate of Oberlin College, for 35 years (1963–1998) he was Librarian and Director of the Archive of Folk Song at the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress. Joe brought together the Ukrainian source and his own verses to create the basis for "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" in collaboration with Pete Seeger. He participated in the first LP recording of "Kumbayah". Along with Dave Guard, he is credited with the creation of the Kingston Trio's version of "Bonny Hielan Laddie". He is a lecturer, researcher, and performer, especially in New York State, Michigan, and the Chicago area. As of 2013 he is living in Portland, Oregon.
The Archive of Folk Culture was established in 1928 as the first national collection of American folk music in the United States of America. It was initially part of the Music Division of the Library of Congress and now resides in the American Folklife Center.
Alan Jabbour was an American musician and folklorist, and the founding director of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.
Benjamin Albert Botkin was an American folklorist and scholar.
Mike Seeger was an American folk musician and folklorist. He was a distinctive singer and an accomplished musician who played autoharp, banjo, fiddle, dulcimer, guitar, mouth harp, mandolin, dobro, jaw harp, and pan pipes. Seeger, a half-brother of Pete Seeger, produced more than 30 documentary recordings, and performed in more than 40 other recordings. He desired to make known the caretakers of culture that inspired and taught him.
Public folklore is the term for the work done by folklorists in public settings in the United States and Canada outside of universities and colleges, such as arts councils, museums, folklife festivals, radio stations, etc., as opposed to academic folklore, which is done within universities and colleges. The term is short for "public sector folklore" and was first used by members of the American Folklore Society in the early 1970s.
James Madison Carpenter, born in 1888 in Blacklands, Mississippi, near Booneville, in Prentiss County, was a Methodist minister and scholar of American and British folklore. He received his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees from the University of Mississippi, and the Doctor of Philosophy degree from Harvard in 1929. He is best known for his substantial work collecting folk songs in England, Scotland and Wales. He recorded well-known singers and musicians that other folklorists had documented, as well as some never recorded before or since such as Bell Duncan, whose repertoire consisted of some 300 songs, including 65 Child ballads. His collection methods included Dictaphone recordings as well as transcriptions of lyrics.
Smithsonian Folkways is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution. It is a part of the Smithsonian's Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, located at Capital Gallery in downtown Washington, D.C. The label was founded in 1987 after the family of Moses Asch, founder of Folkways Records, donated the entire Folkways Records label to the Smithsonian. The donation was made on the condition that the Institution continue Asch's policy that each of the more than 2,000 albums of Folkways Records remain in print forever, regardless of sales. Since then, the label has expanded on Asch's vision of documenting the sounds of the world, adding six other record labels to the collection, as well as releasing over 300 new recordings. Some well-known artists have contributed to the Smithsonian Folkways collection, including Pete Seeger, Ella Jenkins, Woody Guthrie, and Lead Belly. Famous songs include "This Land Is Your Land", "Goodnight, Irene", and "Midnight Special". Due to the unique nature of its recordings, which include an extensive collection of traditional American music, children's music, and international music, Smithsonian Folkways has become an important collection to the musical community, especially to ethnomusicologists, who utilize the recordings of "people's music" from all over the world.
The Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage (CFCH) is one of three cultural centers within the Smithsonian Institution in the United States. Its motto is "culture of, by, and for the people", and it aims to encourage understanding and cultural sustainability through research, education, and community engagement. The CFCH contains (numerically) the largest collection in the Smithsonian, but is not fully open to the public. Its budget comes primarily from grants, trust monies, federal government appropriations, and gifts, with a small percentage coming from the main Smithsonian budget.
Florence Reece was an American social activist, poet, and folksong writer. She is best known for the song "Which Side Are You On?" which she originally wrote at the age of twelve while her father was out on strike with other coal miners, according to The Penguin Book of American Folk Song by Alan Lomax.
Helen Hartness Flanders, a native of the U.S. state of Vermont, was an internationally recognized ballad collector and an authority on the folk music found in New England and the British Isles. At the initiative of the Vermont Commission on Country Life, Flanders commenced a three-decade career capturing traditional songs that were sung in New England—songs that, in many cases, traced their origin to the British Isles. The timing of her life work was critical, coming as it did when people were turning away from traditional music in favor of listening to the radio. Today her nearly 4,500 field recordings, transcriptions and analyses are housed at the Flanders Ballad Collection at Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont and have been a resource for scholars and folk singers, since the establishment of the collection in 1941.
Folkways Records was a record label founded by Moses Asch that documented folk, world, and children's music. It was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1987 and is now part of Smithsonian Folkways.
Anna Lomax Wood is an anthropologist, ethnomusicologist and public folklorist. She is the president of the Association for Cultural Equity (ACE), established in 1985 by her father, musicologist Alan Lomax, at Hunter College, CUNY.
Helen Heffron Roberts (1888–1985) was an American anthropologist and pioneer ethnomusicologist. Her work included the study of the origins and development of music among the Jamaican Maroons, and the Puebloan peoples of the American southwest. Her recordings of ancient Hawaiian meles are archived at the Bernice P. Bishop Museum in Honolulu. Roberts was a protege of Alfred V. Kidder and Franz Boas.
Eloise Hubbard Linscott was a 20th-century American folklorist, song collector, and preservationist. She is the author of Folk Songs of Old New England (1939), considered a valuable scholarly source for American folk songs. John Lee Brooks described Folk Songs of Old New England as an American equivalent of Bishop Percy's 1765 work Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.
Anne Grimes was an American journalist, musician and historian of American folklore. An Ohio folksinger, she collected and performed traditional songs now preserved in the Anne Grimes Collection in the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress. She also collected vintage dulcimers and other instruments now housed in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. in 1997. Grimes was a classically trained vocalist and accomplished pianist among other musical pursuits.
