I believe this is correct for the etymology of the term…
…but I believe this is more accurate as a descriptor of the genre. IMO folk music is primarily typified by acoustic instruments and voices with lyrical subject matter about or from the point of view of non-wealthy and non-societally-powerful individuals (as Horatio says: the poor, workers (as opposed to the employers), and other marginalized people).
For instance, folk music has been an integral part of the labor movement in the US for decades. Roy Zimmerman - The Unions Are To Blame is a recent example, although purists may quibble that the up-tempo metre of the song places it outside the “folk” genre, IMO it fits fine.
To which I’d add Pentangle, Renaissance, Lindisfarne, Steeleye Span, and Fairport Convention.
Folk can be difficult to define and I freely acknowledge my tastes wander into folk rock. Some of Crosby Still Nash and Young feels very like folk, as does some Jethro Tull. For example their album Songs From the Wood.
Sounds about right, although I would include new songs based on those traditions, eg, Dylan’s acoustic songs lifted a lot from the folk tradition in terms of basic approach and specific chords, themes and lyrics, while innovating wonderfully.
Folk music, to me is the opposite of “the eye of the beholder”. It is in the heart of the performer. To paint with a broad brush, folk music is music that owes its existence, then and now, not to accomplished musicians, but to “folks” who performed for the love of performing and then went back to work
A “folk song” can be played by a symphony orchestra (Dvorak, Rimsky-Korsaskov, Copland), but it ceases to be folk music in any other sense than a recognizable melody. At the same time, “Kokomo” can be “folk music” if performed at a barn dance by amateurs with a fiddle and mouth organ, in the spirit of gregariousness in the context of the moment.
To be sure, “folk songs” can be composed, from Stephen Foster to Stan Rogers, and bear a neonatal legitimacy when performed the next morning. The listener doesn’t need to know how long ago the song was born, as long as the composer and performer are true to the spirit and can make the audience believe it belongs in the folk genre.
Pure folk music exists, but some of us may have never actually heard any. The circumference around pure folk music is nebulous, and the genre leaks in all directions (which is why I’m probably contradicting myself). How far Spotify is willing to roam outside the circle is an economic judgment, made by their accountants, not their A&R people.
It’s funny, in writing this, every folk singer I could think of was Canadian – Rogers, Joni Mitchell, Gord Lightfoot, Ian Tyson.
Well, 4 out of the 5 I’d agree with. But Renaissance, no matter what the configuration, wasn’t folk. They were prog rock from the day McCarty and Relf had the idea.