A term used for a broad range of popular music in which contemporary amplified instruments are used to reinterpret traditional music or to accompany contemporary songs in a folk idiom. It was first applied in 1965 in the USA when the Byrds recorded songs associated with the folk singers Pete Seeger (Turn, Turn, Turn) and Bob Dylan (Mr Tambourine Man). The group had an orthodox rock line-up of drums and electric guitars. The Byrds inspired others in turn, including Dylan, to attempt various forms of folk-rock synthesis. Dylan used electric guitars and the electronic organ playing of Al Kooper on his recordings before working with the Hawks (later renamed the Band) in concert. In New York, the Lovin' Spoonful performed the charming and witty compositions of John Sebastian in the manner of an electric jug band. However, ‘folk rock’ was soon appropriated by the record industry as a marketing concept, used to describe almost any group employing vocal harmonies and an acoustic or semi-acoustic instrumental sound. Such groups included Simon and Garfunkel, Sonny and Cher, the Turtles, the Mamas and the Papas and Harper's Bizarre.
In Britain, the pioneers of folk-rock included Fairport Convention, a group whose initial aesthetic was drawn from West Coast groups such as Jefferson Airplane as well as the Byrds. Fairport Convention then turned to traditional music for inspiration, followed by such groups as Steeleye Span and Mr Fox in the development of electric folk music. Steeleye Span's Hark! The Village Wait and the eponymous début album of Mr Fox were among the first recordings of the genre, initiating two different strands within British folk-rock. Steeleye Span fused the texts and melodies of traditional songs with mid-Atlantic pop; Mr Fox wrote their own songs, inspired by traditional themes, and combined the uncompromising sounds of English village bands and singers with those of rock. Folk-rock excited strong passions within the folk revival. It was condemned by ‘purists’ such as Pete Seeger in the USA and Ewan MacColl in Britain who saw the use of amplified instruments as a fatal compromise with show business and the music industry.
Electric folk music also emerged in many other European countries in the 1960s and 70s. In Ireland, the groups Sweeney's Men and Horslips created different syntheses of traditional and contemporary musics. In Brittany the harpist Alain Stivell and the electric guitarist Dan ar Bras renewed the local Celtic repertory. The Swedish group Hedningarna provided a variation on the formula by treating traditional instruments such as the Hardanger fiddle and hurdy-gurdy with contemporary techniques of reverb and sampling. Outside Europe, other variants of the combination between indigenous musics and modern rhythms or technologies were developed, as in Brazil by Chico Science and the group Naçao Zumbi and in Australia by Yothu Yindi.
Although many of the European folk-rock musicians above continued to perform at concerts and festivals throughout the 1990s, new forms of transforming folk music were developing. The most important of these was connected with the growth in local variants of rap music around the globe where musicians integrated sounds and lyrics from their own cultures into the black American genre. Also, in 1999 the latest revival of songs from the United States folk movement of the 1950s occurred when the group Snakefarm made arrangements of them in melancholic trip hop style on the album Songs From My Funeral. (D. Laing and others: The Electric Muse: the Story of Folk into Rock, London, 1975)
DAVE LAING