Folk music

Folk music, in the original sense of the term, is music by and of the people. Folk music arose, and best survives, in societies not yet affected by mass communication and the commercialization of culture. It normally was shared and performed by the entire community (not by a special class of expert performers), and was transmitted by word of mouth.

References

• English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians. Collected by Cecil J. Sharp. Ed. Maud Karpeles. 1932. London. Oxford University Press.
• Carson, Ciaran (1997). Last Night's Fun: In and Out of Time with Irish Music. North Point Press.
• Harker, David (1985). Fakesong: The Manufacture of British 'Folksong', 1700 to the Present Day. Cited in van der Merwe (1989).
• Karpeles, Maud. An Introduction to English Folk Song. 1973. Oxford. Oxford University Press.
• Middleton, Richard (1990/2002). Studying Popular Music. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0335152759.
• Seeger, Charles (1980). Cited in Middleton (2002)
• Sharp, Cecil. Folk Song: Some Conclusions. 1907. Charles River Books
• van der Merwe, Peter (1989). Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of Twentieth-Century Popular Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0193161214.