For this skill and blog assignment, I chose to focus on folk music. During the 1930’s, folk music was very important. Most ‘sophisticated’ styles of music during the Great Depression became associated with the elites and the upper classes, such as jazz and opera. They were disconnected from the average American. Folk music, however, was relatable, did not put on airs, and was usually created by average people.
In the 1930’s, when the United States sought to unify itself through shared culture, folk music became a unifying factor. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt spent $27,315,217 in order to “rediscover and define American culture” 1. One part of this massive undertaking was the upliftment and preservation of folk music. The president and the first lady invited folk musicians to play at official events, and they also “sponsored as series of nine concerts of folk music and dance in the White House between 1934 and 1942”2. Their tactics worked. By their efforts, folk music grew popular among average Americans, and folk music became a style of music that was distinctly American.
Since the 1930s, folk music has evolved and gone through many transformations. Today, most would likely consider modern country music to be folk music. However, it is interesting to take a glance back at what folk music was initially like in the 1930’s when it became popular.
As I went through the audio collections in the Library of Congress, I began to realize why folk music became so popular and widespread. Unlike jazz or opera, folk music felt disconnected from what could be considered “the elite”. The feel of the music I listened to was casual, warm, and inviting. The tuneslisten were simpler and easy to remember, as well as easy to hum or whistle 3. And the singers sang about things that were also simple, easy to remember, and easily relatable and familiarlisten to the average non-elite American 4.
Before I took the time to actually listen to old style folk music, I had no idea what it sounded like. I’d seen pictures of folk artists with guitars and banjos, but I couldn’t picture the music they played. I imagined something similar to country music, with songs that typically focused on lost love and sorrow. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised by how cheerful and mellow folk music could be. When describing music, I think it is important to include actual audio of the music as well. Without the audio, describing music is like describing color to someone who is blind.
- Bindas, Kenneth J. All of This Music Belongs to the Nation: the Federal Music Project of the WPA and American Cultural Nationalism, 1935-1939. UMI, 1989.
- Filene, Benjamin. Romancing the Folk: Public Memory & American Roots Music. Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2008.
- “Haste to the Wedding”, W.P.A. California Folk Music Project Collection, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2017700868/
- “The Little Brown Bulls”, W.P.A. California Folk Music Project Collection, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2017700869/
