Folk Music: Songs of Culture

The word ‘folk’ loosely translates into ‘people’ and thus all folk arts and traditions become arts of people or the masses. Folk carries with itself the connotation of being organic, interactive and belonging to a culture. Like most folk arts, folk music also has a functional sense and more often than not, it is associated with some communal activity, life cycle rituals, games, work and such. Inherently set in the oral culture (meaning that it is passed on orally and not in the written form) folk music travels traditionally, being passed on from one generation to the other. Placed in different historical and social contexts, folk music does assume varying roles in terms of its significance, evolution and nature but the essence remains the same. War songs, Work songs, Anti-war songs, Sea songs, Love songs are few of the folk music traditions all over the world. Keeping with their origins, folk songs tend to be more participatory in nature..

The composition of folk songs may begin at an individual level but the songs go through a process of repeated communal re-creation. It is hard to locate the origins of folk songs as when they are orally passed from one person to another; they adopt a cultural identity, often developing several variations of the same song and shed off any individual sense of creation attached to them. They are also often set to a particular tone or rhyme to make it easier to memorize and carry forward. Folk music is closely related to popular music because it embodies common experiences and has a unifying appeal to any group that identifies as a community. Thus, time and again we have had the conscious inclusion of folk music by the composers producing popular music. The humanist attitude of the Renaissance, in particular, did much to elevate folk music and establish it as a genre of rustic antique song.

Over time and with mass communication opening doors, popular music incorporated folk elements while folk music in some aspects became more popular, being mass produced for a non-participatory audience. Popular folk musicians include names like Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, and the duo, Simon & Garfunkel. In India, we have bands such as The Raghu Dixit Project, Swarathma, Advaita, Tetseo Sisters, Papon & The East India Company and Kailasa which are beloved and widely heard all over the country. These famous names are a testament to the fact that folk music, which is essentially an expression of culture, charms people with its simple artistic beauty and aesthetics.