European Folk Music

Photo by The Mollis courtesy of Folk World

European folk music is usually thought of as the music of traditional peasant societies, rooted in work and in fixed customs.  It is rural music; taught, without being written down, from one generation to the next. However, folk music is affected by, and interwoven with, art music and popular music, of which the different genres are often hard to distinguish. There are numerous times that folk music is sung and played. Folk music is sung as lullabies, and while cooking or weaving. It is played while dancing.  Folk music is sung while working by sailors, lumberjacks, shepherds, and farmers.

Photo by The Mollis courtesy of Folk World	Photo by The Mollis courtesy of Folk World

As folk music was not traditionally spread through written notation, many songs have been lost. However, an incredible amount of folk music does exist in written form and folk music archives exist. These archives grew in the early twentieth century, as people began to focus on saving or preserving 'dying' folk music.