The History of Contemporary Folk Music

Like all of my talks, this is nominally forty-five minutes long but, naturally, can be expanded or contracted by altering the amount of detail included. As you may guess, in this case, the songs are not my own.

Across the world there is a wealth of music not necessarily written for the Classical or Pop market. Songs someone is simply bursting to write. Sometimes a set of circumstances create the song. Sometimes the art is further developed by the writer and a whole new sub-genre appears.

A phenomenon occurred in Britain during the 1950's that sprung partly from folk and partly from jazz. Skiffle, as it was known, required only a very basic musical skill. It was just one step up from the solo or duet in the pub and the folk club.

The troubador dates back to the middle-ages but, suddenly, number of singer-songwriters spawned by this new genre expanded to fill an ever increasing market fed by new recording technology.

The words "contemporary" and "folk" sound contradictory but consider the genre to be the "music of our life and times". Arguably, this has accumulated since the year dot so I have chosen that in living memory and relevant to my own experience.