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Folk rock is a genre of rock music with heavy influences from English folk and American folk music. Combining the elements of folk and rock music, it arose in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom in the mid-1960s. In the U.S., folk rock emerged from the folk music revival.
folk rock, hybrid musical style that emerged in the United States and Britain in the mid-1960s. As the American folk music revival gathered momentum in the 1950s and ’60s, it was inevitable that a high-minded movement that prided itself on the purity of its acoustic instrumentation and its separation from the commercial pop mainstream would ...
- Stephen Holden
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Musical artist. Stephen Arthur Stills (born January 3, 1945) [1] is an American musician, singer, and songwriter best known for his work with Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills & Nash, and Manassas. As both a solo act and member of three successful bands, Stills has combined record sales of over 35 million albums.
- History
- Derivatives
- Festivals
- Electric Folk
Origins
Though the merging of folk and rock music came from several sources, it is widely regarded that the success of "The House of the Rising Sun" by British band the Animals in 1964 was a catalyst, prompting Bob Dylan to go electric. In the same year, the Beatles began incorporating overt folk influences into their music, most noticeably on the song "I'm a Loser" from their Beatles for Sale album. The Beatles and other British Invasion bands, in turn, influenced the Californian band the Byrds, who...
Heyday 1969–76
The rapid expansion of British folk rock that followed in the wake of Liege & Lief in the 1970s came mainly from three sources. First were existing folk performers who now 'electrified', including Mr. Fox, formed around the acoustic duo Bob and Carole Pegg, and Pentangle, who having previously recorded largely without electrification, produced a fourth album of entirely traditional material, Cruel Sister, in 1970, performed very much in the British folk rock mould. Similarly, Swarbrick's form...
Decline and survival 1977–85
For a time electric folk threatened to break through to the mainstream, peaking in the early-to-mid-1970s when Steeleye Span had a Christmas Top 20 hit single ("Gaudete") in 1973 and another Top 5 hit in 1975 ("All Around My Hat"). The album of the same name was their most commercially successful, reaching no. 5 in the UK album chart in the same year. By comparison Fairport Convention released few singles and made very little impact on the British charts, although their albums sold well in th...
Medieval folk rock
From about 1970 a number of performers inspired by electric folk, particularly in England, Germany and Brittany, adopted medieval and renaissance music as a basis for their music, in contrast to the early modern and 19th century ballada that dominated the output of Fairport Convention. This followed the trend explored by Steeleye Span, and exemplified by their 1972 album Below the Salt. Acts in this area included Gryphon, Gentle Giant and Third Ear Band. In Germany Ougenweide, originally form...
Celtic rock
Initially Celtic rock replicated electric folk, but naturally replaced the element of English traditional music with its own folk music. It was rapidly evident in all areas of the Celtic nations and regions surrounding England, as Ireland, Scotland, Isle of Man, Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany all saw the adoption and adaptation of the electric folk model. Through at least the first half of the 1970s, as Celtic rock held close to folk roots, with its repertoire drawing heavily on traditional Ce...
Folk punk
In the mid-1980s a new rebirth of English folk began, this time fusing folk forms with energy and political aggression derived from punk rock. Leaders included The Men They Couldn't Hang, Oysterband, Billy Bragg and The Pogues. Folk dance music also became popular in the 1980s, with the English Country Blues Band and Tiger Moth. The decade later saw the use of reggae with English folk music by the band Edward II & the Red Hot Polkas, especially on their seminal Let's Polkasteadyfrom 1987.
Fairport's Cropredy Convention (previously Cropredy Festival) has been held every year since 1980 near Cropredy, a village five miles north of Banbury, Oxfordshireand attracts up to 20,000 fans. It remains one of the key events in the UK folk festival calendar. After holding a successful open-air concert at Kentwell Hall, Suffolk in 2005, Steeleye ...
When English bands of the late 1960s and early 1970s defined themselves as 'electric folk' they were making a distinction with the already existing 'folk rock'. Folk rock was (to them) what they had already been producing: American or American style singer-songwriter material played on rock instruments, as undertaken by Bob Dylan and the Byrds from...
However, Dylan first became famous as a folk musician. In 1962, he released his first album, simply called Bob Dylan. The next year, he released the folk song "Blowin' in the Wind", which became very popular. In 1965, he began playing rock and roll.
Apr 3, 2014 · Who Is Bob Dylan? Folk-rock singer-songwriter Bob Dylan signed his first recording contract in 1961, and he emerged as one of the most original and influential voices in American popular...
