folk music: References & Edit History

Among the scholarly periodicals devoted primarily to folk music, the most important are the Yearbook for Traditional Music (annual), formerly the Journal of the International Folk Music Council (1949–68) and the Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council (1971–80); Ethnomusicology (3/yr); and The Journal of American Folklore (quarterly).

General works on folk music of Europe and the Americas are The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, vol. 3, The United States and Canada, ed. by Ellen Koskoff (2001), and vol. 8, Europe, ed. by Timothy Rice, James Porter, and Chris Goertzen (2000); George Herzog, “Song: Folk Song and the Music of Folk Song,” in Maria Leach and Jerome Fried (eds.), Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend, vol. 2, pp. 1032–50 (1950, reissued in 1 vol., 1984); and appropriate articles in Stanley Sadie and John Tyrell (eds.), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., 29 vol. (2001), also available online by subscription. Useful books include Bruno Nettl and Gerard Béhague, Folk and Traditional Music of the Western Continents, 3rd ed., rev. and ed. by Valerie Woodring Goertzen (1990); Jan Ling, A History of European Folk Music (1997; originally published in Swedish, 1989); Philip V. Bohlman, The Study of Folk Music in the Modern World (1988); and Kip Lornell and Anne Rasmussen (eds.), Musics of Multicultural America (1997).

Béla Bartók, Hungarian Folk Music (1931, reprinted 1981; also reprinted with new prefaces and appendices and with annotations by Zoltán Kodály as The Hungarian Folk Song, ed. by Benjamin Suchoff [1981]; originally published in Hungarian, 1924) is a classic study of one folk music style. Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales, 2nd ed., edited by Stephen Mitchell and Gergory Nagy (2000), deals with the epic traditions of eastern Europe. Cecil J. Sharp and Olive Dame Campell (compilers), English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, ed. by Maud Karpeles, 2 vol. (1932, reprinted 1966), is the pioneer collection of Anglo-American song; the total tune repertory of the most important traditional ballads in England and North America is published in Bertrand Harris Bronson, The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, 4 vol. (1959–72).

An important survey of the world’s folk music in relation to certain characteristics of cultures is Alan Lomax, Folk Song Style and Culture, ed. by Edwin E. Erickson (1968, reprinted 1978). Other contextual studies include Mark Slobin (ed.), Retuning Culture: Musical Changes in Central and Eastern Europe (1996); Timothy Rice, May It Fill Your Soul: Experiencing Bulgarian Music (1994); Jane C. Sugarman, Engendering Song: Singing and Subjectivity at Prespa Albanian Weddings (1997); Neil V. Rosenberg (ed.), Transforming Tradition: Folk Music Revivals Examined (1993); and Mark Slobin, Subcultural Sounds: Micromusics of the West (1993).

The history of folk music research is treated in D.K. Wilgus, Anglo-American Folksong Scholarship Since 1898 (1959, reprinted 1982); and Bruno Nettl and Phillip V. Bohlman (eds.), Comparative Musicology and Anthropology of Music: Essays on the History of Ethnomusicology (1991).