Folk Music - The Tunes and Lyrics Keep Pulling Us In

I've been an unabashed Folkie since I was eight years old. That was the year my parents brought home a recording of sea chanteys. For the sailors, work songs. For my little brother and me, a whole new world of tuneful adventure. Besides, at school the music teacher taught us "Sweet Molly Malone," and Miss Hansen, our strict social studies teacher, taught us to dance to "Weaving the Wadmal."

There's something about folk music that keeps haunting me.

I don't mean all of it. I've never much liked "Oh Susanna" or ""She'll be Coming Around the Mountain." For starters, I mean dance music like the "Virginia Reel" and "Golden Slippers." Then the songs Pete Seeger, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan sang. My latest discovery is Canada's rich folk music tradition.

So what does a barely musical person like me love about folk music?

To start with, I like the tunes that set my feet tapping. I like the partner dancing and the patterns that fiddlers set in motion. This dance music is active music, not the sit-around kind. It's something children and grownups can do together. Size doesn't matter when you and your partner are moving toward the head of the reel.

Now on to some sad but powerful music, like "On the Banks of the Ohio." That's a plaintive song, one of Joan Baez's specialties. The words were about a man who killed his unfaithful lover. That one's not exactly for children but maybe it doesn't really matter. The way the gory words and plaintive tune are at odds is part of the fascination.

Then there are the folk songs that helped shape great social movements, heartening the people who gathered. "Blowin' in the Wind," now that's a great song, great poetry in fact, a blend of words and music that unlike some folk nonsense songs makes a lot of sense: "How many roads must a man walk down before they call him a man?" Recently, I heard that tune played by a street musician in Mexico. The song knows no borders, either in space or time. Long ago, I heard it sung by Peter, Paul and Mary on the Mall the day Martin Luther King spoke.

"We Shall Overcome" is at least as deeply imbedded in the civil rights movement. "Deep in My Heart, I Do Believe..." A song to remember.

The CD I bought recently of folk music from Canada includes songs sung in English, Gaelic, French, and Yiddish. Just a border between us but all the words and most of the tunes were new to me. One that sets me dancing, even in the kitchen and by myself is "In the Land of the Muskeg and the Shining Birch Tree."

So, back to the question, are the lyrics or the tunes what make folk music live? For me the musical pull has to be there but the words are the kicker. And, yes, I think music can be "folk" even when we know who wrote it.