Contemporary Folk

Contemporary folk music broadly refers to folk music that is written in present times, as opposed to traditional folk music. The term “contemporary music” is sometimes used to refer to certain generational trends in music or what is current in the market.

As folk music began to be marketed as popular music in the 20th century, its musical content quickly became modified to become more like popular music. Such modified folk music often incorporates electric guitars, drum kit or forms of rhythmic syncopation that are characteristic of popular music, but are absent in traditional folk music.

Since the 1970s, a genre of “contemporary folk” fuelled by new singer-songwriters has continued to make the coffee-house circuit and keep the tradition of acoustic non-classical music alive. Such artists include Chris Castle, Steve Goodman and John Prine, as well as The Pogues from London and The Corrs from Ireland, who have brought traditional tunes back into the album charts.

This description is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses materials from the Wikipedia article "Contemporary folk".