I have always been called a folk musician. Yet, I often feel that some of my songs may not fit the profile of folk music.
In 1990s, despite my afford in explaining to media in Hong Kong that I was not "a singer/song writer", "a folk musician", nor "a folk rock singer" but all of the above and more, individual magazines, newspapers and radio stations would still each choose a term they preferred to describe May Ip. Lately, I have run into a similar situation while setting up account on various music downloading sites - I have to choose a genre for myself. In the end, I picked folk, because there are no other given choices which even come close to describing any of my songs.
A little digging reveals that folk music has a great many definitions. On his Folk Music blog, Maryl Neff writes,
The term "folk music" was invented by nineteenth-century scholars to describe the music of peasantry, age-old and anonymous.
According to Kim Ruehl at folkmusic.about.com, the term, "folk song," covers a vast array of musical styles, but is most commonly used to refer to a narrative song that uses traditional melodies to speak on a particular topic.
AllExperts' Mike Turner holds a more contemporary view of what folk songs are:
Folk songs are concrete and direct. They deal with 'real events' - whether these are the imaginings of a performer, or are a true history, is not the point - what is crucial is that the telling must have that quality of documentary directness.
Garnet Rogers once said that "folk music is journalism. It has to say something about the human condition and people's lives and how they relate to one another, to themselves or to their jobs" (Murri & Murri, 1990, pp. 13-14).
So, some of my songs are by definition folk songs. For example, What's the Use of it if Dreams are Only Dream which describes lives of Vietnamese refugees. Other songs, like My Heart is Sinking, express my personal feelings rather than being narration of stories with social topics. In other words, it is not possible to fit all my songs into one genre.
This afternoon, I sat down and listed all the originals I have recorded then attempted to identify those which are folk songs. I discovered that I am 40% folk.
