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4.0 out of 5 stars
What is "folk?", August 22, 2008
This review is from: Bound to Go (Audio CD)
Folk ... You can recognize it in some sensory way, but what, in words, is it? Topically, it's about Man's inhumanity to Man, and it does not encourage human vices. Of all pre-rap musical genres, folk requires the least training and talent. It's typically, but not exclusively, from rural, undereducated areas. Folk music perspective is usually first person detached, as in, "I saw a man who was broke and hungry," as opposed to the first person involved perspective of the blues, which would write the same sentiment, "I'm broke and hungry," or classical music's classical, "A man was hungry 200 years ago."
This record is folk because it's rudimentary arrangements of 19th century songs, played rudimentarily. The songs are interesting, stemming as they do from antebellum slave hymns, shouts and hollers. It's the sort of record enjoyed most by musicians, ethnomusicologists and film industry music directors. It would be nice to see it in most American public libraries and a lot of school and church libraries and it would be a nice project for church groups, high school history classes and/or blues societies to purchase copies for those libraries. Old words can be good words can need to be spread. To folks.
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