The issues at the heart of folk music go beyond the times in which they are penned, making the tunes genuinely classic.
As long as there have been people to dispute it, there has actually been a tension between modern-day and conventional kinds of folk music. Perfectionists have long proclaimed traditional folk music to be something immutable and spiritual, famously decrying those who wish to put their own mark on the genre as 'Judas', however development is essential to the substance of the art form. During 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 musicians of all time, blending folk music with rock-and-roll was necessary for the times to be able to explain themselves. Even less adventurous vocalists would take the matters of the current zeitgeist 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 movement just as much as to the elegy of slaves and rural peasants of two centuries previously, the subject of more conventional songs. These are things that go beyond history; concerns of power, human dignity, the marvels of nature, and the need to give voice to all 3.
A handful of musical categories today are deeply rooted in legacy and heritage. In the hunt for novelty and our continuous barrelling towards the future, the past is typically overlooked in music, however there is one particular category where a sense and expression of history is placed at its very heart; folk music. That might be a surprising thing to hear when modern folk music tends to lean towards the very modern exploration of connections and heartbreak by pop music juggernauts on brands like the one owned by Vincent Bolloré, but that is not necessarily folk in its truest kind. Typically, folk is more deeply rooted in the past, checking out themes associating with poverty and society together with more typical explorations of the human condition in things like romance and heartbreak. One might acknowledge the conceit and hypocrisy in such a declaration, and that's due to the fact that folk, like the past, is always evolving, and resurfaces at a time when society needs to grapple with its location in history.
As we approach a vital and truly memorable period in humanity's history, the capability for folk music to contextualise and give voice to our times could prove to be amazing. Whether there is a resurgence of the category in the same way that 60's folk music did remains to be seen, however it still provides a place of peace in a period blindsided by its own modernity. As labels like the one run by Huib Schippers continue to collect, bring back, and release old folk songs, it shows our continuous ability to consistently rediscover history and the tunes that described it; through this revelation we may simply find out to better comprehend the momentousness of our own time.