The Origins of American Folk Music

Ah, American folk music. I can practically hear the bald eagle screeching in the distance. If you’re anything like me, the idea of American folk music might be encapsulated by this scene from the movie Deliverance.

Folk music is often considered to represent the essence of a culture. More realistically, however, it represents an idea of the most “simplistic” lifestyle that exists in a culture (the people living that lifestyle being the “folk”). We know that most Americans aren’t banjo playing residents of rural Georgia, but that’s where our imaginations go when trying to picture a watered-down version of the United States. That’s in part why American folk music is and has always been so closely associated with the rural south. Surprisingly, though, the rural south is not where most American folk music originated.

Over the course of American history, the idea of who the “folk” are has changed. To the first colonists of the United States, the “folk” were Native Americans. Their culture seemed simple and “different” to the colonists, so they became the “others.” Not soon after colonization, it was European immigrants who became the “folk.” The final resting place for the “folk” in early American folk music was slaves, and, later, black people in general. Throughout the process of othering these different sets of people, early Americans mimicked and imitated components of their music in an attempt to evoke the essence of the “folk.” For this reason, it is important to recognize that much of what is considered to be early American folk music is actually taken from the traditions of people that early Americans looked down upon.

A Messy Origin Story

The origins of American folk music beg the question of whether it is uniquely American or hardly American at all. Similar to a lot of aspects of American culture, much of American folk music did not originate in the United States. Some of the staples of folk music in the United States were either lifted directly from other countries or were modified based on pre-existing instruments and songs. For the sake of ruining everyone’s sense of identity, I’ve picked a couple of components of American folk music that came from elsewhere.

The Banjo

The Melodies

Most early American folk music tradition came from Great Britain, Scotland, and Ireland. According to musicologist Bruno Nettl, “The British broadsides make up one of the largest single segments of Anglo-American folk song.” These broadsides usually dealt with contemporary subject matter, and the words were often changed to tell the story of the time. For that reason, there were a variety of popular melodies that were sung with any number of different texts. The result was that many “standard” American folk songs were based entirely on British ballad melodies. Take the song “On Top of Old Smoky,” for example.

Although certain aspects of American folk music were borrowed from other cultures, some might argue that the fusion and adaptation of this music are what makes it uniquely American. Historian Lawrence Levine summed up this argument nicely, saying, “It is not necessary for a people to originate or invent all or even most of the elements of their culture. It is necessary only that these components become their own, embedded in their traditions, expressive of their world view and lifestyle.”

Original Genres of American Folk Music

While much of American folk music was borrowed from elsewhere, there were a couple of genres that originated on their own in the United States.

Shanties

In the nineteenth century, people who did certain jobs (such as lumberman, sailors, etc.) wrote songs about their experiences and occupations. These songs were newly written (aka not borrowed from anyone) and were essentially the work songs of the people doing this tough labor. One of the shanties that have remained popular is “Shenandoah,” which, if it isn’t permanently in your ear from middle school band, is included below for your listening pleasure. Since so many shanties were related to particular vocations or events, they weren’t as popular in the broader folk music repertoire as songs from other folk genres. They are notable for my purpose because their origin is one of the more simple and easily traceable to the United States, however.

Religious Music and Spirituals

Religion was highly influential in the lives of early Americans. Worship communities were settings within which expression through song was encouraged. In white communities, religious texts were sung to traditional folk melodies, which resulted in the formation of white gospel music.

Spirituals are African American worship folk songs. Tracing the exact origin of the spiritual is difficult, but the first evidence of spirituals being sung/written down is from 1801 when A Collection of Spiritual Songs and Hymns Selected from Various Authors was published for worship. This volume didn’t have music, but a later collection of spirituals, The Harp of Zion, was published in 1893 with hymns set to melodies. The Harp of Zion became extremely popular in black congregations upon publishing. Aside from worship, the influence of spirituals on early American music culture was huge. Ensembles like the Fisk Jubilee Singers gained notoriety for spreading spirituals throughout the country.

Both spirituals and white religious music were unique to worship in the United States and became an integral aspect of early American folk music.

Does it even matter?

Regardless of where components of a particular song came from, many early American folk songs are still at the core of our collective identity. In classic United States fashion, we could even argue that the way early Americans adapted these songs to their experiences and lifestyles is exactly what resonates with American culture.

Regardless, I think that it is important to have an understanding of American folk music as a collection of the experiences of those who have been othered and considered the “folk” throughout America’s history – and not to erase their contributions under the guise of a collective identity.