The Indulgences

One day while randomly surfing through journal entries on Last.fm, I came across this: "My problems with the overuse of the terms folk and folk rock." It set the cogs and wheels of my brain in motion and they've been chugging along ever since. What exactly is folk music, what is pop and what, if any, are the alternatives?

I hate it when people ask me what kind of music I play because I have no idea what to say. I've told quite a few people that what I do is a sort of folk rock. Oh dear. So, what exactly is it that I play; more importantly, what exactly is it that I want to be playing in the future? I need to know so that I can sell it to an audience so they'll want to be at my show, sell it to a bunch of other musicians so they'll want to be in my band and sell it to myself so that I have a solid vision to hold on to of something more that just a few badly beaten SongFight entries.

After some thought, I've decided that, for my purposes at any rate, folk music is one of two basic genres that together include all music; the other could be called art music, though I wish I could come up with something better (that didn't imply that folk music isn't art). The heart of the difference between the two lies in the idea of an oral tradition and music that survives because people like and remember it as opposed to music that is composed and survives because it is written down. Before anyone can play a symphony, the score must be distributed to the members of the orchestra; folk musicians learn to play the song while they're playing the song. The idea of popular music as a genre seems meaningless; pop is whatever the record companies are having the best luck selling this week.

With these definitions in hand, it is clear to me that I am a folk singer. Not only that, it is clear to me that I have I strong commitment to folk music. I play the songs that I remember.