The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #157386 Message #4177002
Posted By: Lighter
16-Jul-23 - 09:14 AM
Thread Name: Still wondering what's folk these days?
Subject: RE: Still wondering what's folk these days?
"Officially-sanctioned music that has to toe the official line."
I think that's limited to national anthems, religious hymns, and music in North Korea.
As I and others have said for years, "folk music" is a sometimes useful but extremely vague label. Except for scholarly use, I think the opinions of a robot in this case are as valid as anybody's.
Especially with the encouragement of music-industry marketing strategy in the sixties, people apply it to all sorts of things that academics do not. I find that annoying but gave up caring fifty years ago.
But I do believe this is the first time I've seen folk song defined mainly by *subject matter* rather than by origin, transmission, milieu, style, or all three.