Neofolk

Neofolk or Neuer Deutscher Folk (New Germanic Folk) is a music genre comprised of late-20th-century and early-21st-century music with a similarity to folk music of various sorts. It often borrows musically from traditional acoustic Central and Northern European folk music but sometimes has a distinct Post-industrial musical influence.

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In 2003, Douglas Pearce of Death In June, while on an Australian radio show called "The Vanishing Point", played selections of music from a wave of music artists within Germany and Scandinavia that had been directly influenced by his work. He termed these groups as part of a "Neofolk" movement. These artists had appeared in greater and greater frequency during the last several years and were spurred by Pearce's support and regular collaboration. The term itself had also been in use for several years prior by various online neofolk and Post-industrial webzines.

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The term has since expanded to include artists directly influenced by this movement, although not necessarily influenced by the folk music created by Death In June, from any region who either create folk music with similar music characteristics as the abovementioned artists while using their own native instruments and folklore as basis or who experienced the same stylistic shift from creating industrial music to creating folk music in general.

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Music genre: A music genre is a category (or genre) of pieces of music that share a certain style or "basic musical language" (van der Merwe 1989, p.3). Music can also be categorised by non-musical criteria such as geographical origin. Such categories are not strictly genre and a single geographical category wil...

20th-century: The 20th century lasted from 1901 to 2000 in the Gregorian calendar. Common usage sometimes regards it as lasting from 1900 to 1999, but this is often considered incorrect due to the nonexistence of a "Year Zero" before AD 1. The 20th century is also sometimes known as the nineteen hundreds (1900s)...

21st-century: In calendars based on the Christian Era or Common Era, such as the Gregorian calendar, the 21st century is the current century, as of this writing. By some interpretations, it lasts from 2001 to 2100, and the 3rd millennium lasts from 2001 to 3000. This is based on the argument that there was no Y...