Folk Music and Song

FOLK MUSIC AND SONG Folk music and song, performed for friends, family, and visitors and learned by ear and imitation, express the deepest values, joys, and anxieties of a community. Musicians classify folk music as tunes (melodies) or songs (sung words). Scholars classify folk music and song by topic (e.g., work or love), genre (e.g., reels and blues), occupational group (e.g., railroad, cowboy, coal-mining songs), cultural group (e.g., Cherokee, African American), region (Appalachia, Mississippi Delta), and secular or sacred (although they are often stylistically similar). Song categories include the catalog (the oldest, linked with action and characterized by repetition and inventories of components), the lyric (characterized by images linked to the emotions of a first-person speaker), and the ballad (a sung tale that leaps and lingers through the stanza images chronologically and dramatically).