Examples of Folk Music
Examples of folk music are the named songs, artists and recordings that a listener can point to and say, this is folk, and the clearest set runs from the traditional ballads of the 1960s revival to the indie folk records that the small-label scene presses today. Folk is a genre defined by its relationship to a community's music, and it has 3 main branches, traditional, revival and modern indie, each with its own examples.
This page gives a working set of examples in each branch, with the artists and recordings that define them, so a new listener can hear the genre's range before deciding which branch to follow. The examples are drawn from the same small-label scene that the rest of this site documents, and they show how one form of music has been rebuilt on top of the last for over 60 years.
What counts as an example of folk music
What counts as an example of folk music is a song that belongs to one of the genre's 3 branches, and the test is simple. A traditional folk song is one passed down through a community before any named performer, and it usually has a melody that is older than the words. A revival folk song is one that a named artist brought to a mass audience in the 1960s, often by updating a traditional tune. A modern indie folk example is one written by a named artist and released on an independent label from the 2000s on. If a record fits any of those 3 tests, it is a folk example, and the branches overlap, since a modern writer can take a traditional song and rebuild it.
Traditional folk examples
Traditional folk examples are the oldest songs in the genre, and they are the ones that predate recording by decades. A typical traditional ballad runs 3 to 6 verses and tells a story, often of work, love or disaster, and the same tune can carry 3 or more different sets of words. The examples below are a sample, not a catalogue, and each one has a recorded version on the small-label releases that keep the form alive. What makes them examples of folk rather than of popular music is that no single artist owns them, and they are still being learned and sung by people who have never met the original singer.
Revival and singer-songwriter examples
Revival and singer-songwriter examples are the records that carried the traditional songs to a mass audience, and they date mostly from the 1960s and 1970s. Bob Dylan's 1963 recordings of Blowin' in the Wind and a later set of standards are the best known, and the same era brought the work of Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary and Joni Mitchell, each of whom took the guitar-ballad form and gave it a modern voice. The singer-songwriter branch that followed in the 1970s added a personal lyric, with artists like John Prine and Jackson Browne writing songs about specific lives rather than general themes. These examples matter because they are the bridge: they took the traditional material and made it a vehicle for a single named writer, which is exactly the move that indie folk would later make on the small-label model.
Modern indie folk examples
Modern indie folk examples are the records that show the form as it is made now, and they are the most numerous of the 3 branches. The defining album is Bon Iver's 2007 record For Emma, Forever Changed, which is the example most often cited, and it is joined by Fleet Foxes' 2008 debut and a wave of solo writers including Sufjan Stevens, Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker, each of whom released their early work on independent labels. These examples are the current face of the genre, and they are distributed through the same small-label scene that handles the older records, which is why the traditional, revival and modern branches all sit under one roof here. A listener who hears one example from each branch will have a clear picture of how folk music works across the whole span.
How the examples connect
How the examples connect is that each branch borrows from the one before it, and the line runs in one direction. The revival artists took the traditional songs and recorded them, the singer-songwriters took that form and made it personal, and the modern indie folk writers took the personal form and rebuilt it on independent labels with modern production. The examples on this page are the named records a listener can start from, and the genre pages on indie folk, acoustic folk and the popular folk songs list go deeper into each branch. For a listener who wants the faith-based examples of the form, the Christian indie folk page covers the songs and artists that carry a spiritual lyric in the same acoustic style.