This subject will introduce students to some of the folk music of the British Isles and North America and to some of the scholarship as well as the folklore about it. We will examine the musical qualities of “folk poetry” -particularly the old narrative Scottish and English ballads. We will try to understand the historical contexts in which folk music was a precious part of everyday life. We will survey how, when and why folk music began to be collected, beginning in the 18th century with broadsides, Percy’s Reliques, and Sir Walter Scott’s collections -and how it changed the course of literary history. We will compare the instrumental styles and sung ballads as they migrated from the U.K. to North America- with their attendant changes and continuities. We will examine the great confluence of African- American musics and texts with these European ones to create U.S folk music. We hope to conclude with the “folk revivals” in the USA and Britain in the 1950’s and 1960’s, although we usually don’t manage to get that far.
