Folk music stands at an intersection in between past and present, which is what makes it such a crucial and everlasting genre.
As long as there have actually been individuals to debate it, there has been a tension between contemporary and standard types of folk music. Perfectionists have long proclaimed traditional folk music to be something unchangeable and sacred, famously decrying those who wish to put their own mark on the category as 'Judas', but evolution is necessary to the substance of the thing. Throughout the American folk music revival of the 1960's, when Rob Stringer's label was home to a few of the most innovative and popular folk artists of all time, mixing folk music with rock-and-roll was essential for the times to be able to describe themselves. Even less audacious singers would take the concerns of the current moment and frame them within the design and heart of history, covering demonstration tunes or producing initial arrangements that could have applied to the counterculture and civil rights campaign just as much as to the lament of slaves and rural peasants of 2 centuries previously, the subject of more traditional tunes. These are things that go beyond history; problems of power, human self-respect, the marvels of nature, and the need to give voice to all three.
As we approach an essential and genuinely memorable period in mankind's history, the ability for folk music to contextualise and give expression to our times might turn out to be remarkable. Whether there is a rebirth of the genre in the same way that 60's folk music did remains to be seen, but it still supplies a spot of consolation in an era blindsided by its own modernity. As labels like the one run by Huib Schippers continue to gather, restore, and release old folk songs, it proves our continuous ability to regularly find history and the tunes that described it; through this finding we might simply learn to much better understand the momentousness of our own time.
A handful of musical genres today are deeply rooted in tradition and heritage. In the hunt for novelty and our nonstop barrelling towards the future, the past is typically ignored in music, however there is one particular genre where a sense and manifestation of history is positioned at its very heart; folk music. That may be an unexpected thing to hear when modern folk music tends to lean towards the very contemporary pursuit of affairs and heartbreak by pop music juggernauts on brands like the one owned by Vincent Bolloré, however that is not always folk in its truest kind. Typically, folk is more deeply rooted in the past, exploring ideas relating to poverty and society along with more typical considerations of the human condition in things like love and heartbreak. One may recognise the conceit and insincerity in such a statement, which's because folk, like the past, is constantly developing, and resurfaces at a time when society should come to grips with its location in history.