I seem to like folk music a lot. This is a more recent discovery for me, and I’m questioning what it is about it that I like. I was interested in the 70’s Singer/Songwriters that were discussed in class last week, probably mostly for the reason that they stem from folk. I revisited Carol King’s album Tapestry, and so far I enjoy it, but for surface level reasons- because it has folk-sounding elements (i.e. piano-lead; acoustic guitar presence; poetic lyrics but in everyday language; storytelling or personal themes in the lyrics). It sounds homey to me for some reason.

I have a “folk” playlist on Spotify, and because I was curious about which subcategories they are actually in, I looked them up on Wikipedia to see how their genres were labelled (and to see if I was wrong). “Indie Folk” came up for the majority of my favorites: Iron and Wine, The Milk Carton Kids, Mumford & Sons, The Oh Hellos, and Radical Face. There were some different ones- The Wailin’ Jennys, a Canadian group, came up as “Bluegrass/folk”, and Sandra McCracken, a Christian singer, got “Americana/folk/gospel”. Trace Bundy is another big one on my playlist, but I’m not sure if he counts as folk because his music is just acoustic guitar instrumentals. I’d have to listen to the songs more to pick out styles. Anyway, it doesn’t surprise me to find that there are dozens of subcategories stemming from folk. This creates a lot of variety which I enjoy.

Reasons I like the music are pretty simple: I just enjoy the mellowness of the sound and the acoustic-driven style. This seems pretty surface-level though. I seem to just like the way the music sounds without much regard for what the lyrics are talking about. Not that there’s anything wrong with listening to music just for the sound of it. I just think its important to note that, when getting to know another genre, it’s easy to associate it with preconceived stereotypes. Like for me, when I hear a bluegrass song, I might see countryside imagery in my head and find that relaxing while the lyrics could be about something totally different.