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Folk Music

Folk music

Folk music, in the original sense of the term, is music by and of the people. Folk music arose, and best survives, in societies not yet affected by mass communication and the commercialization of culture. It normally was shared and performed by the entire community (not by a special class of expert performers), and was transmitted by word of mouth. During the 20th and 21st century, the term folk music took on a second meaning: it describes a particular kind of popular music which is culturally descended from or otherwise influenced by traditional folk music. Like other popular music, this kind of folk music is most often performed by experts and is transmitted in organized performances and commercially distributed recordings. However, popular music has filled some of the roles and purposes of the folk music it has replaced. Folk music is more or less synonymous with traditional music. Some would use either term with a more specific meaning, restricted to just popularized-folk/traditional music or just not-popularized; however, both terms are used interchangeably among the general population and are not strictly defined. See also: World music.

Defining folk music

World music "Folk music is usually seen as the authentic expression of a way of life now, past or about to disappear (or in some cases, to be preserved or somehow revived). Unfortunately, despite the assembly of an enormous body of work over some two centuries, there is still no unanimity on what folk music (or folklore, or the folk) is." (Middleton 1990, p.127) Gene Shay, co-founder and host of the Philadelphia Folk Festival, defined folk music in an April 2003 interview by saying: "In the strictest sense, it's music that is rarely written for profit. It's music that has endured and been passed down by oral tradition. [...] And folk music is participatory—you don't have to be a great musician to be a folk singer. [...] And finally, it brings a sense of community. It's the people's music." The English term folk, which gained usage in the 18th century (during the Romantic period) to refer to peasants or non-literate peoples, is related to the German word Volk (meaning people or nation). The term is used to emphasize that folk music emerges spontaneously from communities of ordinary people. "As the complexity of social stratification and interaction became clearer and increased, various conditioning criteria, such as 'continuity', 'tradition', 'oral transmission', 'anonymity' and uncommercial origins, became more important than simple social categories themselves." Charles Seeger (1980) describes three contemporary defining criteria of folk music (Middleton 1990, p.127-8): # A "schema comprising four musical types: 'primitive' or 'tribal'; 'elite' or 'art'; 'folk'; and 'popular'. Usually...folk music is associated with a lower class in societies which are culturally and socially stratified, that is, which have developed an elite, and possibly also a popular, musical culture." Cecil Sharp (1972), A.L. Lloyd (). # "Cultural processes rather than abstract musical types...continuity and oral transmission...seen as characterizing one side of a cultural dichotomy, the other side of which is found not only in the lower layers of feudal, capitalist and some oriental societies but also in 'primitive' societies and in parts of 'popular cultures'." Redfield (1947) and Dundes (1965). # Less prominent, "a rejection of rigid boundaries, preferring a conception, simply of varying practice within one field, that of 'music'." David Harker (1985) argues that "folk music" is, in Peter van der Merwe's words, "a meaningless term invented by 'bourgeois' commentators". Jazz musician Louis Armstrong and blues musician Big Bill Broonzy have both been attributed the remark "All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song."

Subjects of folk music

Apart from instrumental music that forms a part of folk music, especially dance music traditions, much folk music is vocal music, since the instrument that makes such music is usually handy. As such, most folk music has lyrics, and is about something. Narrative verse looms large in the folk music of many cultures. This encompasses such forms as traditional epic poetry, much of which was meant originally for oral performance, sometimes accompanied by instruments. Many epic poems of various cultures were pieced together from shorter pieces of traditional narrative verse, which explains their episodic structure and often their in medias res plot developments. Other forms of traditional narrative verse relate the outcomes of battles and other tragedies or natural disasters. Sometimes, as in the triumphant Song of Deborah found in the Biblical Book of Judges, these songs celebrate victory. Laments for lost battles and wars, and the lives lost in them, are equally prominent in many folk traditions; these laments keep alive the cause for which the battle was fought. The narratives of folk songs often also remember folk heroes such as John Henry to Robin Hood. Some folk song narratives recall supernatural events or mysterious deaths. Hymns and other forms of religious music are often of traditional and unknown origin. Western musical notation was originally created to preserve the lines of Gregorian chant, which before its invention was taught as an oral tradition in monastic communities. Folk songs such as Green grow the rushes, O present religious lore in a mnemonic form. In the Western world, Christmas carols and other traditional songs preserve religious lore in song form. Other sorts of folk songs are less exalted. Work songs are composed; they frequently feature call and response structures, and are designed to enable the labourers who sing them to coordinate their efforts in accordance with the rhythms of the songs. In the armed forces, a lively tradition of jody calls are sung while soldiers are on the march. Professional sailors made use of a large body of sea shanties. Love poetry, often of a tragic or regretful nature, prominently figures in many folk traditions. Nursery rhymes and nonsense verse also are frequent subjects of folk songs.

Variation in folk music

Music transmitted by word of mouth though a community will, in time, develop many variants, because this kind of transmission cannot produce word-for-word and note-for-note accuracy. Indeed, many traditional folk singers are quite creative and deliberately modify the material they learn. Because variants proliferate naturally, it is naïve to believe that there is such a thing as the "authentic" version of a ballad such as "Barbara Allen." Field researchers in folk song (see below) have encountered countless versions of this ballad throughout the English-speaking world, and these versions often differ greatly from each other. None can reliably claim to be the original, and it is quite possible that whatever the "original" was, it ceased to be sung centuries ago. Any version can lay an equal claim to authenticity, so long as it is truly from a traditional folksinging community and not the work of an outside editor. Cecil Sharp had an influential idea about the process of folk variation: he felt that the competing variants of a folk song would undergo a process akin to biological natural selection: only those new variants that were the most appealing to ordinary singers would be picked up by others and transmitted onward in time. Thus, over time we would expect each folksong to become esthetically ever more appealing — it would be collectively composed to perfection, as it were, by the community. On the other hand, there is also evidence to support the view that transmission of folk songs can be rather sloppy. Occasionally, collected folk song versions include material or verses incorporated from different songs that makes little sense in its context. A perfect process of natural selection would not have permitted these incoherent versions to survive.

The decline of folk traditions in modern societies

Folk music seems to reflect a universal impulse of humanity. No fieldwork expedition by cultural anthropologists has yet discovered a preindustrial people that did not have its own folk music. It seems safe to infer that folk music was a property of all people starting from the dawn of the species. However, the development of modern society--first literacy, then the conversion of culture into a salable commodity--created a new form of transmission of music that first influenced, then in some societies essentially eliminated the original folk tradition. The decline of folk music in a culture can be followed through three stages.

Stage I: Urban influence

One of the first folk traditions impacted by modern society was the folksong of rural England. Starting in Elizabethan times, urban poets wrote broadsheet ballads that (thanks to printing) could be sold widely. The ballads probably didn't need musical notation, since they would have been sung to tunes that everybody knew, the folk tradition being very much alive at the time. These ballads heavily influenced the folk tradition, but did not override it. In fact, the folk tradition showed great resilience. Through the process of folk transmission, the urban ballads were modified, keeping the more vivid content and ironing out the less "citified" material. The resulting body of folk lyrics is widely considered to be a very appealing blend. Thus, the printing press and widespread literacy did not suffice to destroy the English folk tradition, but in some ways enriched it. The English folk song legacy was probably affected by urban melodies as well as words. The clue here is that folk music in remote rural areas of the English-speaking world, such as Highland Scotland or the Appalachian mountains, abounds in tunes that employ the pentatonic scale, a scale widely used for folk music around the world. However, pentatonic music was rare among the rural English villagers who first volunteered their tunes to researchers in the late 19th century. A plausible explanation is that life in rural England was far more closely affected by the proximity to the urban centers. Music in the standard major and minor scales evidently penetrated to the nearby rural areas, where it was converted to folk idiom, but nevertheless succeeded in displacing the old pentatonic music.

Stage II: Replacement of folk music by popular music

The pattern of urban influence on folk music was intensified to outright destruction as soon as the capitalist economic system had developed to the point that music could be packaged and distributed for the purpose of earning a profit--in other words, when popular music was born. It was around Victorian times that ordinary people of the Western world were first offered music as a mass commodity, for example, in the phenomenon of Music Hall. The introduction of popular music was simultaneous with the latter part of the Industrial Revolution. This was a time of great change in lifestyle for the great body of the people, notably the migration of the old agrarian communities to the new industrial ones. It is likely that the resulting social disruption helped cut people's emotional bonds to their old folk music, and thereby helped the shift in taste toward popular music. As technology advanced, succeeding generations became enticed with popular music in ever more accessible and desirable forms. Gramophone records became LPs and then CDs; the Music Hall gave way to radio, followed by television. With the ever-increasing success of popular music, the musical life of many individuals eventually ceased to include any folk music at all. Moreover, since popular music for most people is passive music (that is, listened to, but not created or performed), the overwhelming success of popular music also entailed a sharp decline of music as an active, participatory activity.

Stage III: Loss of musical ability in the community

The terminal state of the loss of folk music can be seen in the United States and a few similar societies, where except in isolated areas and among hobbyists, traditional folk music no longer survives. In the absence of folk music, many individuals do not sing. It is possible that non-singers feel intimidated by widespread exposure in recordings and broadcasting to the singing of skilled experts. Another possibility is that they simply cannot sing, because they did not sing when they were small children, when learning of skills takes place most naturally. Certainly it is very common for contemporary Americans to claim that they cannot sing. There is anecdotal evidence that the loss of singing ability is continuing rapidly at the present time. As recently as the 1960s, audiences at American sporting events collectively sang the American national anthem before a game; the anthem is now generally assigned to a recording or to a soloist. Inability to sing is apparently unusual in a traditional society, where the habit of singing folk song since early childhood gives everyone the practice needed to able to sing at least reasonably well.

Regional variation

The loss of folk music is occurring at different rates in different regions of the world. Naturally, where industrialization and commercialization of culture are most advanced, so tends to be the loss of folk music. Yet in nations or regions where folk music is a badge of cultural or national identity, the loss of folk music can be slowed; this is held to be true, for instance in the case of Hungary, Ireland, Brittany, and Galicia, Greece and Crete all of which retain their traditional music to some degree.

Fieldwork and scholarship on folk music

Starting in the 19th century, interested people - academics and amateur scholars - started to take note of what was being lost, and there grew various efforts aimed at preserving the music of the people. One such effort was the collection by Francis James Child in the late 19th century of the texts of over three hundred ballads in the English and Scots traditions (called the Child Ballads). Contemporaneously came the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould, and later and more significantly Cecil Sharp who worked in the early 20th century to preserve a great body of English rural folk song, music and dance, under the aegis of what became and remains the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS). Sharp also worked in America, recording the folk songs of the Appalachian Mountains in 1916-1918 in collaboration with Maud Karpeles and Olive Dame Campbell. Around this time, composers of classical music developed a strong interest in folk song collecting, and a number of outstanding composers carried out their own field work on folk song. These included Ralph Vaughan Williams in England and Béla Bartók in Hungary. These composers, like many of their predecessors, incorporated folk material into their classical compositions. In America, during the 1930s and 1940s, the Library of Congress worked through the offices of musicologist Alan Lomax and others to capture as much American field material as possible. Often, fieldworkers in folk song hoped that their work would restore folk music to the people. For instance, Cecil Sharp campaigned, with some success, to have English folk songs (in his own heavily edited and expurgated versions) to be taught to schoolchildren. One theme that runs through the great period of scholarly folk song collection is the tendency of certain members of the "folk", who were supposed to be the object of study, to become scholars and advocates themselves. For example, Jean Ritchie was the youngest child of a large family from Viper, Kentucky that had preserved many of the old Appalachian folk songs. Ritchie, living in a time when the Appalachians had opened up to outside influence, was university educated and ultimately moved to New York City, where she made a number of classic recordings of the family repertoire and published an important compilation of these songs.

Folk revivals

As folk traditions decline, there is often a conscious effort to resuscitate them. Such efforts are often exerted by bridge figures such as Jean Ritchie, described above. Folk revivals also involve collaboration between traditional folk musicians and other participants (often of urban background) who come to the tradition as adults. The folk revival of the 1950's in Britain and America had something of this character. In 1950 Alan Lomax came to Britain, where at a Working Men's Club in the remote Northumberland mining village of Tow Law he met two other seminal figures: A.L.'Bert' Lloyd and Ewan MacColl, who were performing folk music to the locals there. Lloyd was a colourful figure who had travelled the world and worked at such varied occupations as sheep-shearer in Australia and shanty-man on a whaling ship. MacColl, born in Salford of Scottish parents, was a brilliant playwright and songwriter who had been strongly politicised by his earlier life. MacColl had also learned a large body of Scottish traditional songs from his mother. The meeting of MacColl and Lloyd with Lomax is credited with being the point at which the British roots revival began. The two colleagues went back to London where they formed the Ballads and Blues Club which eventually became renamed the Singers' Club and was the first, as well as the most enduring, of what became known as folk clubs. As the 1950s progressed into the 1960s, the folk revival movement built up in both Britain and America. Another example is the Hungarian model, the tanchaz movement. This model involves strong cooperation between musicology experts and enthusiastic amateurs, resulting in a strong vocational foundation and a very high professional level. They also had the advantage that rich, living traditions of Hungarian folk music and folk culture still survived in rural areas, especially in Transylvania. The involvement of experts meant an effort to understand and revive folk traditions in their full complexity. Music, dance, and costumes remained together as they once had been in the rural communities: rather than merely reviving folk music, the movement revived broader folk traditions. Started in the 1970s, tanchaz soon became a massive movement creating an alternative leisure activity for youths apart from discos and music clubs—or one could say that it created a new kind of music club. The tanchaz movement spread to ethnic Hungarian communities around the world. Today, almost every major city in the U.S. and Australia has its own Hungarian folk music and folk dance group; there are also groups in Japan, Hong Kong, Argentina and Western Europe. See also: blues, Harry Everett Smith.

The emergence of popular folk artists

During the twentieth century, a crucial change in the history of folk music began. Folk material came to be adopted by talented performers, performed by them in concerts, and disseminated by recordings and broadcasting. In other words, a new genre of popular music had arisen. This genre was linked by nostalgia and imitation to the original traditions of folk music as it was sung by ordinary people. However, as a popular genre it quickly evolved to be quite different from its original roots. Confusingly, popular (i.e., commercially-disseminated) music based on a folk tradition is called "folk music", no matter how different it may be from a folk music rooted in the community. As a result, some individuals in a modern society are unaware that folk music of the original variety ever existed. The rise of folk music as a popular genre began with performers whose own lives were rooted in the authentic folk tradition. Thus, for example, Woody Guthrie began by singing songs he remembered his mother singing to him as a child. Later, in the 1930s and 1940s, Guthrie both collected folk music and also composed his own songs, as did Pete Seeger, who was the son of a professional musicologist. Through dissemination on commercial recordings, this vein of music became popular in the United States during the 1950s, through singers like the Weavers (Seeger's group), Burl Ives, Harry Belafonte and the Kingston Trio, who tried to reproduce and honor the work that had been collected in preceding decades. The commercial popularity of such performers probably peaked in the U.S. with the ABC Hootenanny [http://www.tvtome.com/Hootenanny/] television series in 1963, which was cancelled after the arrival of the Beatles, the "British invasion" and the rise of folk-rock. The itinerant folksinger lifestyle was exemplified by Ramblin' Jack Elliott, a disciple of Woody Guthrie who in turn influenced Bob Dylan. Sometimes these performers would locate scholarly work in libraries and revive the songs in their recordings, for example in Joan Baez's rendition of "Henry Martin," which adds a guitar accompaniment to a version collected and edited by Cecil Sharp. Publications like Sing Out! [http://singout.org/] magazine helped spread both traditional and composed songs, as did folk-revival-oriented record companies. Many of this group of popular folk singers maintained an idealistic, leftist/progressive political orientation. This is perhaps not surprising. Folk music is easily identified with the ordinary working people who created it, and preserving treasured things against the claimed relentless encroachments of capitalism is likewise a goal of many politically progressive people. Thus, in the 1960s such singers as Joan Baez, Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan followed in Guthrie's footsteps and to begin writing "protest music" and topical songs, particularly against the Vietnam War, and likewise expressed in song their support for the civil rights movement. Such songs were newly written, but took their instrumentation and stanza forms from folk tradition. In Ireland, The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem (although the members were all Irish born, the group became famous while based in New York's Greenwich Village, it must be noted), The Dubliners, Clannad, Planxty, The Chieftains, The Pogues and a variety of other folk bands have done much over recent years to revitalise and repopularise Irish traditional music. These bands were rooted, to a greater or lesser extent, in a living tradition of Irish music, and they benefitted from collection efforts on the part of the likes of Seamus Ennis and Peter Kennedy, among others. In Hungary, the group Muzsikás and the singer Márta Sebestyén became known throughout the world due to their numerous American tours and their participation in the Hollywood movie The English Patient and Sebestyén's work with the Deep Forest band.

The blending of folk and popular genres

The experience of the last century suggests that as soon as a folk tradition comes to be marketed as popular music, its musical content will quickly be 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 were absent in the original. One example of this sort is contemporary country music, which descends ultimately from a rural American folk tradition, but has evolved to become vastly different from its original model. Rap music evolved from an African-American inner-city folk tradition, but is likewise very different nowadays from its folk original. A third example is contemporary bluegrass, which is a modified development of American old time music. As less traditional forms of folk music gain popularity, one often observes tension between so-called "purists" or "traditionalists" and the innovators. For example, traditionalists were indignant when Bob Dylan began to use an electric guitar. His electrified performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival was to prove to be an early focal point for this controversy. Sometimes, however, the exponents of amplified music were bands such as Fairport Convention, Pentangle, Mr. Fox and Steeleye Span who saw the electrification of traditional musical forms as a means to reach a far wider audience, and their efforts have been largely recognised for what they were by even some of the most die-hard of purists. Traditional folk music forms also merged with rock and roll to form the hybrid generally known as folk rock which evolved through performers such as The Byrds, Simon and Garfunkel, The Mamas and the Papas, and many others. 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 in the United States. Such artists include Steve Goodman, John Prine, Cheryl Wheeler, Bill Morrisey, Christine Lavin and Gundula Krause. Lavin in particular has become prominent as a leading promoter of this musical genre in recent years. Some, such as Lavin and Wheeler, inject a great deal of humor in their songs and performances, although much of their music is also deeply personal and sometimes satirical. In the 1980s a group of artists like Phranc and The Knitters propagated a form of folk music also called country punk or folk punk, which eventually evolved into Alt country. More recently the same spirit has been embraced and expanded on by performers such as Dave Alvin, Ani DiFranco, and Steve Earle. At the same time, a line of singers from Baez to Phil Ochs have continued to use traditional forms for original material. The appropriation of folk has even continued into hard rock and heavy metal, with bands such as Skyclad, Waylander and Finntroll melding distinctive elements of folk styles from a wide variety of traditions, including in many cases traditional instruments such as fiddles, tin whistles and bagpipes as an element of their sound. Unlike other folk-related genres, folk metal shies away from organized religion in favour of more ancient pagan inspired themes. A similar stylistic shift, without using the "folk music" name, has occurred with the phenomenon of Celtic music, which in many cases is based on an amalgamation of Irish traditional music, Scottish traditional music, and other traditional musics associated with lands in which Celtic languages are or were spoken (regardless of any significant research showing that the musics have any genuine genetic relationship; so Breton music and Galician music are often included in the genre). One of the more unusual offshoots of modern folk music is the genre now known as filk, a form of music defined primarily by who its audience is. Folk music is still extremely popular among some audiences today, with folk music clubs meeting to share traditional-style songs, and there are major folk music festivals in many countries, eg the Port Fairy Folk Festival is a major annual event in Australia attracting top international folk performers as well as many local artists. The Cambridge Folk Festival in Cambridge, England is always sold out within days, and is noted for having a very wide definition of who can be invited as folk musicians. The "club tents" allow attendees to discover large numbers of unknown artists, who, for ten or fifteen minutes each, present their work to the festival audience.

Pastiche and parody

Popular culture sometimes creates pastiches of folk music for its own ends. One famous example is the pseudo-ballad sung about brave Sir Robin in the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Enthusiasts for folk music might properly consider this song to be pastiche and not parody, because the tune is pleasant and far from inept, and the topic being lampooned is not balladry but the medieval heroic tradition. The arch-shaped melodic form of this song (first and last lines low in pitch, middle lines high) is characteristic of traditional English folk music. A more recent similarly incisive send-up of folk music, this time American in origin, is the film A Mighty Wind by Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy. Another instance of pastiche is the notoriously well-known theme song for the television show Gilligan's Island (music by George Wyle, lyrics by Sherwood Schwartz). This tune is also folk-like in character, and in fact is written in a traditional folk mode (modes are a type of musical scale); the mode of "Gilligan's Island" is ambiguous between Dorian and Aeolian. The lyrics begin with the traditional folk device in which the singer invites his hearers to listen to the tale that follows. Moreover, two of the stanzas repeat the final short line, a common device in English folk stanzas. However, the raising of the key by a semitone with each new verse is an unmistakable trait of commercial music and never occurred in the original folk tradition. Folk music is easy to parody because it is, at present, a popular music genre that relies on a traditional music genre. As such, it is likely to lack the sophistication and glamour that attach to other forms of popular music. Folk music satire ranges from the worst excesses of Rambling Syd Rumpo and Bill Oddie to the deft and subtle artistry of Sid Kipper, Eric Idle and Tom Lehrer. Even "serious" folk musicians are not averse to poking fun at the form from time to time, for example Martin Carthy's devastating rendition of "All the Hard Cheese of Old England" (written by Les Barker), to the tune of "All the Hard Times of Old England", Robb Johnson's "Lack of Jolly Ploughboy," and more recently "I'm Sending an E-mail to Santa" by the Yorkshire-based harmony group Artisan. Other musicians have been known to take the tune of a traditional folk song and add their own words, often humourous, or on a similar-sounding yet different subject; these include The Wurzels and The Incredible Dr. Busker. Filk music is a closely related musical genre which originated as parodies of folk songs, and parody remains a dominant theme of the style. It is evolving into a true folk tradition, however, with songs learned orally that are undergoing the "folk process" of change in melody and text.

Media

See also


- American folk music
- Cretan folk music
- Child Ballads
- Christmas carol
- Folk clubs
- Folk instrument - a description and list of folk instruments
- Hymn
- Serbian folk music - list of Serbian folk songs
- List of folk music genres
- Neofolk - A revival of sorts.
- [http://www.dancingturtle.co.uk Dancing Turtle]
- Inn til vegge - a set of traditional music song games in Bergen, Norway

External links

Folksong material:
- [http://www.mudcat.org/ mudcat.org], the home of the Digital Traditions (DIGITRAD) folksong database. The latest (2002) edition of DIGITRAD contains lyrics, and in some cases tunes or chords, for around 9000 folk rock, folk revival, and authentic American, English, and Irish folk songs, as well as some parodies. The database may be searched online, or downloaded as a standalone application. Another portal to DIGITRAD with file formats converted to emerging standards (e.g. ABC) is available at http://sniff.numachi.com/~rickheit/dtrad/.
- [http://www.csufresno.edu/folklore/BalladSearch.html The Traditional Ballad Index] search page. Provides bibliographic information and some theoretical genealogical information for many ballads in English.
- [http://www.travel-impressions.de/music/dichosa.htm Photos of Regional and Cultural Genres of Music and Dance]
- http://www.smsu.edu/folksong/maxhunter/. The Max Hunter Folk Song Collection is a set of about 1600 field recordings made by Max Hunter between 1956 and 1976 in the Ozark Mountain region of Missouri. The recordings are downloadable.
- [http://www.birchmore.clara.net/ Northumbrian Traditional Music] The folk music of Northumbria in North-East England.
- The [http://mtcn.free.fr folk music in the county of Nice] (France) : hundreds of MIDI files, lyrics, music sheets.
- http://ingeb.org. A list of folksongs from all over the world
- http://www.volksmusiknet.ch/. Swiss Folkmusic
- Musipedia contains several thousand folk music tunes. [http://www.musipedia.org musipedia.org]
- http://www.tritonus.ch/. Swiss Folkmusic and -instruments
- [http://www.geocities.com/krofnic/index1.htm Pticice] - a free MP3 album of native Serbian music
- http://folktunes.org/. The Folktunes Wiki, with streaming and downloadable songs, lyrics, and all things folk. In its infancy.
- [http://www.folkalley.com FolkAlley.com] - 24-hour streaming folk music
- [http://www.folkandroots.co.uk Folk and Roots]- A guide to the folk scene in the UK
- [http://www.floridamemory.com/Collections/folklife/folklife_cd.cfm Music from the Florida Folklife Collection] - From Shove It Over, a WPA recording of a work song performed by Zora Neale Hurston, to Orange Blossom Special, performed by Gamble Rogers and Will McLean, this CD spans fifty years of Florida folk music. The recordings are downloadable.
- [http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/WiscFolkSong Wisconsin Folksong Collection, 1937-1946]. Presented by the [http://uwdc.library.wisc.edu/ University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center] and [http://music.library.wisc.edu/ Mills Music Library Special Collections]. The Wisconsin Folksong Collection, 1937-1946 contains Wisconsin field recordings, notes, and photographs made by UW-Madison faculty member Helene Stratman-Thomas as part of the Wisconsin Folk Music Recording Project, co-sponsored by the University of Wisconsin and the Library of Congress during the summers of 1940, 1941, and 1946; and recordings collected by song catcher Sidney Robertson Cowell during the summer of 1937 for the Special Skills Division of the Resettlement Administration. Folk Festivals:
- [http://www.folkdranouter.be Folkfestival Dranouter:] An annual folk festival in Belgium, attracting over 70 000 visitors, which combines traditional with contemporary music. History:
- [http://libcom.org/history/articles/revolutionary-song-france People's history: Political folk song in France, 1789-1989]
- [http://libcom.org/history/articles/revolutionary-song-italy People's history: Political song in Italy, 1862-1999] Pastiche and parody:
- [http://arago4.tn.utwente.nl/stonedead/movies/holy-grail/scene-10.html A web page on "The Ballad of Sir Robin", with lyrics and sound file]
- Gilligan's Island theme:
  - [http://www.gilligansisle.com/wave.html Sound files]
  - [http://www.geocities.com/rickanddarvagossip/gilliganthemesong.html Lyrics: one of many sites ]

References


- English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians. Collected by Cecil J. Sharp. Ed. Maud Karpeles. 1932. London. Oxford University Press.
- Carson, Ciaran (1997). Last Night's Fun: In and Out of Time with Irish Music. North Point Press.
- Harker, David (1985). Fakesong: The Manufacture of British 'Folksong', 1700 to the Present Day. Cited in van der Merwe (1989).
- Karpeles, Maud. An Introduction to English Folk Song. 1973. Oxford. Oxford University Press.
- Middleton, Richard (1990/2002). Studying Popular Music. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0335152759.
- Seeger, Charles (1980). Cited in Middleton (2002)
- Sharp, Cecil. Folk Song: Some Conclusions. 1907. Charles River Books
- van der Merwe, Peter (1989). Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of Twentieth-Century Popular Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0193161214. Category:Folk music Category:Folklore ja:フォークソング



World music

World music is, most generally, all the music in the world (Bohlman 2002, Nidel 2004, p.3), but is more specifically all music genres that are not part of mainstream popular music or classical music and has some kind of "ethnic" component. The word connotes traditional or folk music from the third world, European popular and folk music with influences from the third world, and traditional music especially (but not only) from the third world. The term is used primarily as a marketing/classificatory device, sometimes referring to any kind of foreign music, especially in a foreign language. Succinctly, "local music from out there" (fRoots magazine, quoted in N'Dour 2004, p.1). World music is generally agreed to be traditional, folk or roots musics of any culture that is created and played by indigenous musicians or that is "closely informed or guided by indigenous music of the regions of their origin" (Nidel 2004, p.2). The broad catergory of "world music" includes isolated forms of ethnic music from diverse geographical regions. These dissimilar strains of ethnic music are commonly categorized together by virtue of their indigenous roots. In recent years, common access to global communication among artists and the general public has given rise to a phenomenon named "cross-over" music. Musicians from diverse cultures and locations can readily access music from around the world, creating a melting pot of stylistic influences. While communication technology allows greater access to obscure forms of music, it also presents the risk of musical homogeny blurring regional identity.

Before 1987

In 1968 Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones recorded The Master Musicians of Joujouka in the village of Joujouka in the North of Morocco. Jones died the following year but the LP was released in 1971 on Rolling Stones Records. This collaboration between Jones and the Sufi trance masters is generally regarded as being the first "World Music" album. The origins of the term World Music in relation to the selling of this type of music began in 1982 when World Music Day (Fête de la Musique) was initiated in France. World Music Day is celebrated on the 21st of June every year since then. On Monday 29th June 1987 a meeting of interested parties gathered to capitalise on the marketing of this genre. Arguably popular interest was sparked with the release in 1986 of Paul Simon's Graceland album. The concept behind the album was to express his own sensibilities using the sounds which he had fallen in love with listening to artists from Southern Africa, including Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Savuka. But this project and the work of Peter Gabriel and Johnny Clegg amongst others had to some degree introduced non-western music to a wider audience and this was an opportunity which could not be ignored. Before 1987, although World Music undoubtedly had a following and with this potential market opening up, it was difficult for interested parties to sell their music to the larger music stores; although specialist music stores had been important in developing the genre over many years, the record companies, broadcasters and journalists had been finding it difficult to build a following because the music itself seemed too scarce. They were eyeing the Jazz and Classic markets, watching them develop a cross-over audience and decided that the best way forward would be to collective strategy to bring the music to a wider audience.

After 1987

At the outset of the 1987 meeting, the musician Roger Armstrong advised why something needed to be done; "(He) felt that the main problem in selling our kind of material lay with the U.K. retail outlets and specifically the fact that they did not know how to rack it coherently. This discouraged them from stocking the material in any depth and made it more difficult for the record buyers to become acquainted with our catalogues." The first concern of the meetings was to select the umbrella name that this 'new' music would be listed under. Suggestions included 'World Beat' and prefixing words such as 'Hot' or 'Tropical' to existing genre titles, but 'World Music' won after a show of hands, but initially it was not meant to be the title for a whole new genre, rather something which all of the record labels could place on the sleeves of records in order to distinguish them during the forthcoming campaign. It only became a title for the genre after an agreement that despite the publicity campaign, this wasn't an exclusive club and that for the good of all, any label which was selling this type of music would be able to take advantage. Another issue which needed to be addressed was the distribution methods which existed at the time. Most of the main labels were unhappy with the lack of specialist knowledge displayed by sales persons which led to poor service; there was also a reluctance amongst many of the larger outlets to carry the music, because they understandably liked larger releases which could be promoted within store. It was difficult to justify a large presentation expense if the stock going into stores was limited. One of the marketing strategies used in the vinyl market at the time was the use of browser cards, which would appear in the record racks. As part of the World Music campaign it was decided that these would be a two colour affair designed to carry a special offer package; to aid the retailer a selection of labels would also be included (presumably for shelf or rack edging). In an unprecedented move, all of the World Music labels co-ordinated together and developed a compilation cassette for the cover of the music magazine NME. The overall running time was ninety minutes, each package containing a mini-catalogue showing the other releases on offer. This was a smart move as NME reader are often seen as discerning listeners and it was important step to get them on board. By the time of that second meeting it was becoming clear that in order for the campaign to be successful, it should have its own dedicated press officer. They would be able to juggle the various deadlines and also be able to sell the music as a concept to not just the national stations but also regional DJs who were keen to expand the variety of music they could offer. They were seen as a key resource as it was important for 'World Music' to be seen as something which could be important to people outside London - most regions after all had a similarly rich folk heritage which could be tapped into. A cost effective way of achieving all this would be a leafleting campaign. The next step was to develop a World Music chart, gathering together selling information from around fifty shops, so that it would finally be possible to see which were big sellers in the genre - allowing new listeners to see what was particularly popular. It was agreed that the NME could again be involved in printing the chart and also Music Week and the London listings magazine City Limits. It was also suggested that Andy Kershaw might be persuaded to do a run down of this chart on his show regularly. And so October of 1987 was designated 'World Music' month. A music festival, 'Crossing the Border' was held at the Town & Country Club, London and it was the start of the winter season for both WOMAD and Arts Worldwide. The main press release stressed the issues inherent in the campaign: "Since the early Eighties the enthusiasm for music from 'outside' Western pop culture has been steadily mounting. More and more international artists, many of whom are big stars in their own countries, are coming here on tour. They started off, like The Bhundu Boys, playing small clubs and pubs, but now many acts are so popular that they are packing out larger venues. "The excitement and word-of-mouth appeal is backed up by radio - World of Music on Voice of America, Transpacific Sound Paradise on WFMU, The Planet on Australia's ABC Radio National, DJ Edu presenting D.N.A: DestiNation Africa on BBC Radio 1Xtra, Adil Ray on the BBC Asian Network, Andy Kershaw's show on on BBC Radio 3 and Charlie Gillett's show [http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/wmusic.shtml] on the BBC World Service to name but seven... and the demand for recordings of non-Western artists is surely growing. This is where the problems can start for the potential buyer of 'World Music' albums - the High Street record shop hasn't got the particular record, or even a readily identifiable section to browse through, it doesn't show in any of the published charts, and at this point all but the most tenacious give up - and who can blame them?" 'World Music' became prominent very quickly. Paul Simon acknowleged as much when he featured the Graceland musicians in his concerts. Today, mainstream music has adopted many of the features of world music, and artists such as Shakira and the members of the Buena Vista Social Club have reached a much wider audience. At the same time world music has been influenced by hip hop, pop and jazz etc. World music radio programs these days will often be playing African hip hop or reggae artists, crossover Bhangra and Latin American jazz groups, etc. Public radio and webcasting are an important way for music enthusiasts all over the world to hear the enormous diversity of sounds and styles which, collectively, amount to World Music. The BBC, NPR, and ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) are rich sources for World Music where it is possible to listen online as well as read about the artists and history of this genre. The BBC presents awards for World Music artists every year:

Awards for World Music 2005

The hosts for the Awards for World Music 2005 Poll Winners' Concert were Eliza Carthy and Benjamin Zephaniah and the nominees were:

Africa


- Tinariwen (winner)
- Thandiswa Mazwai
- Rokia Traore
- Youssou N'Dour

Asia/Pacific


- K. Chakrabarty (winner)
- Faiz Ali Faiz
- Sainkho Namtchylak
- Sevara Nazarkhan

Americas


- Lhasa (winner)
- Bebel Gilberto
- Bajafondo Tango Club
- Lila Downs

Europe


- Amparanoia (winner)
- Enzo Avitabile & Bottari
- Ivo Papasov
- Ojos De Brujo

Middle East and North Africa


- Khaled (winner)
- Chehade Brothers
- Mercan Dede
- Souad Massi

Newcomer


- Chango Spasiuk (winner)
- Ba Cissoko
- Amparanoia
- Yasmin Levy

Boundary Crossing


- Bebo And Cigala (winner)
- Björk
- Clotaire K
- Lhasa

Club Global


- Clotaire K (winner)
- Gilles Peterson
- Gotan Project
- Mercan Dede

Critics Award


- Youssou N'Dour (winner)
- Lhasa
- Tinariwen
- Andrew Cronshaw

Audience Award


- Chehade Brothers
- Enzo Avitabile & Bottari
- Ivo Papasov (winner)
- Mercan Dede It is possible to listen to the sounds of all the nominees at the BBC webpage for the awards:
- [http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/awards2005/nominees.shtml 2005]
- [http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/world/awards2004/ 2004]
- [http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/world/awards2003/index.shtml 2003]
- [http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/world/awardsnom.shtml 2002]

Some other artists featured prominently on the BBC's World Music websites


- Emmanuel Jal
- Koffi Olomide
- Ali Farka Toure
- The late Fela Kuti
- Femi Kuti
- Praful Dave
- Bebe
- Seu Jorge
- Rahul Sharma and Shafaat Ahmed Khan
- Lobi Traore

Some of the artists featured prominently on NPR's World music webpages


- Singer Matisyahu
- Celso Fonseca
- Buena Vista Social Club
- Waldemar Bastos
- Konono
- Yo-Yo Ma with the Silk Road Ensemble
- Femi Kuti
- Funk Carioca
- Pitch Black Afro
- Xavier Rudd
- Shukar Collective
- Hugh Masekela
- Trans-Global Underground
- Daara J
- The Kaiser Chiefs
- Ladysmith Black Mambazo
- Jon Hassell
- Lee Perry
- King Sunny Ade
- Ravi Shankar
- Lúnasa
- Aterciopelados
- Rokia Traoré
- Thermal and a Quarter
- Bob Marley
- Paris Combo
- Curly Musgrave
- Mory Kanté
- Ozomatli
- Youssou N'Dour
- Miriam Makeba

NPR's World Cafe

The NPR website for World Cafe says: "World Cafe showcases an eclectic blend, from rock and world music to folk and alternative country." [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4810458]

ABC's Music Deli

Examples of some artists who have been featured on ABC's Music Deli:
- Joseph Tawadros
- Bobby Singh
- Satsuki Odamura
- Sandy Evans
- Heval
- Kavisha Mazzella
- Irini Vella
- The Roadtrippers
- Marcel Khalife and his Al Mayadine Ensemble
- Ibrahim Ferrer

Festivals

There are LOTS of World Music festivals and jazz/folk/roots/new age crossover events. Only a small selection can be represented here:
- FloydFest in Floyd, Virginia, USA. Has featured artists from a wide diversity of styles including Ani DiFranco, Geno Delafose & French Rockin' Boogie, Trumystic, Nickel Creek and Akoya Afrobeat Enemble.
- The WOMAD Foundation puts on festivals in different countries all around the world and these have included artists such as Youssou N'Dour, Robert Plant and Jaojoby [http://www.womad.org/] [http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/womad2005/index.shtml].
- The Festival in the Desert takes place every year at Essakane, near Timbuktu, in Mali, West Africa and has achieved international status in spite of the difficulties of reaching its location. [http://www.eyefortalent.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/artist.detail/artist_id/70] [http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/music/features/festival-desert.shtml]
- Stern Grove festival is a San Francisco celebration of musical and cultural diversity. Examples: Lucinda Williams, John Doe, Ojos de Brujo, O-Maya, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the Funk Brothers and also symphony orchestras and operatic stars. [http://www.sanfranciscokids.net/news/stern_grove.htm]

Music labels


- Luaka Bop, David Byrne's music label
- Real World Studios, Peter Gabriel's music label
- Dancing Turtle [http://www.dancingturtle.co.uk Flash-based site]
- Rough Guide series
- Folkways series
- [http://www.tropical-music.com/ Tropical Music] WorldMusic label
- Crammed Discs

Criticisms of the Genre

Some musicians and curators of music have come to dislike the term "world music." On October 3, 1999, David Byrne, aforementioned as the founder of the Luaka Bop music label, wrote an editorial in The New York Times explaining his digression. To many including Byrne, "world music" is a catchall name for non-western music of all genres. As such, it changes its own market. The labeling and categorization of other cultures as "exotic" is argued to attract an insincere consumership and deter other potential consumers. Critics of the term propose eliminating the category and integrating the records into existing "western" genres, be it folk, pop, jazz, classical, hip hop or otherwise.

See also


- List of cultural and regional genres of music
- Crossover (music)
- New age music

Sources


- Bohlman, Philip (2002). World Music: A Very Short Introduction, "Preface". ISBN 0192854291.
- N'Dour, Youssou. "Foreward" to Nickson, Chris (2004). The NPR Curious Listener's Guide to World Music. ISBN 0399530320.
- Nidel, Richard (2004). World Music: The Basics. ISBN 0415968011.

External links


- [http://www.joujouka.net/ Master Musicians of Joujouka]
- [http://www.publicradiofan.com/cgi-bin/progsearch.pl?type=world+music&when=listall World music radio programs online]
- [http://worldmusicinternational.com World Music International] - List Your World Music Band / Event
- [http://www.frootsmag.com/content/issue/charts/ fROOTS magazine charts and lists]
- [http://www.globalrhythm.net/top10worldmusiccd/ Global Rhythm's Top Ten]
- [http://www.wmce.de/ World Music Charts Europe]
- [http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/world_promo.shtml BBC World music webcast player]
- [http://www.worldmusiccentral.org/ WorldMusicCentral.org]
- [http://spintheglobe.earball.net/ Spin the Globe: World Music radio & info]
- [http://www.afropop.org/ Afropop Worldwide]
- [http://www.festival.de-festival.de/ World-Music-Festival]in Germany
- [http://www.travel-impressions.de/music/dichosa.htm Photos of Regional and Cultural Genres of Music and Dance]
- [http://www.putumayo.com/ Putumayo World Music]
- [http://www.abc.net.au/rn/music/deli/default.htm ABC's Music Deli homepage]
- [http://www.abc.net.au/message/blackarts/music/default.htm ABC's Message Stick indigenous people's music pages]
- [http://www.bbc.co.uk/1xtra/tx/documentaries/index.shtml 1Xtra audio documentaries]
- [http://www.losttrails.com/pages/music.html Lost Trails] - Traditional music from Romania, Turkey, Greece and Bulgaria (commercial site)
- [http://www.earth-rhythms.com/ Earth-Rhythms]
- [http://www.songlines.co.uk/ Songlines UK based 'world music' magazine]
- [http://malaysianjazz.com/saharadja.html Indonesian World Music band live in concert, Penang, Malaysia] Category:World music Category:Radio formats Category:Musical genres Category:Globalization

Philadelphia Folk Festival

The Philadelphia Folk Festival is a three-day festival of folk music held annually in Schwenksville, Pennsylvania in the vicinity of Philadelphia by the non-profit Philadelphia Folksong Society since 1957. Gene Shay has for the entire history of the festival been the Master of Ceremonies, and continues to be a personality of folk music on the east coast.

See also


- Folk music
- Newport Folk Festival

External links

Official website: http://www.folkfest.org/ Category:Folk festivals Category:Pennsylvania culture Category:Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Profit

:For the television series see Profit (TV series) Profit is a positive return made on an investment by an individual or by business operations. The word comes from Latin meaning "to go forward." It is a relatively ill-defined concept - methods of calculation differ between accountants and economists. Marxist economists refer to it as the 'surplus value' extracted by capitalists from their workers. Profitability refers to the amount of profit received relative to the amount invested, often measured by a rate of profit or rate of return on investment. Economists and accountants measure profit in slightly different ways. What is commonly known as profit is the difference between sales and costs by a business enterprise. However, the term is also used more generally to refer to value added, which only be the same when all the factors of production have been credited their full opportunity cost. The profit motive - enterprises being free to make as much profit as they can given market conditions - is often regarded to be a good thing. It is held to give firms incentives for allocative efficiency and technical efficiency. This idea is a corollary of the theorems of welfare economics and utility maximisation. However, profits can include economic rents, which do not produce efficiency. For instance, a monopoly can have very high profits but produce less economic welfare.

Economic definitions of profit

Caution - these definitions are different from those used by accountants In Economics, a firm is said to be making an economic profit when its revenue exceeds the total opportunity cost of its inputs. It is said to be making an accounting profit if its revenues exceed the total price the firm pays for those inputs. In a single-goods case, economic profit happens when the firm's average cost is less than the price of the product or service at the profit-maximizing output. The economic profit is equal to the quantity output multiplied by the difference between the average total cost and the price. (In circumstances of perfect competition, average cost = marginal cost at the profit-maximising position) All enterprises constitute investments by their owners of capital. The return to owners' capital under competitive competition is the accounting profit and compensates the owner for not being able to make alternative use of their capital. It is the opportunity costs of a venture. Accounting profit exceeds economic profit. The accounting profit sometimes include an element in recognition of the risks that an investor takes. It is often uncertain, because of incomplete information, whether an enterprise will succeed or not. In these cases, economists treat returns to risk as part of the accounting profit, as it is also an element of the cost of capital. Economic profit does not occur in perfect competition. Once risk is accounted for, long-lasting economic profit is thus viewed as an inefficiency caused by monopolies or some other form of market failure. Economic profit is sometimes referred to as supernormal profit and accounting profit as normal profit. The social profit from a firm's activities is the normal profit plus or minus any externalities that occur in its activity. A polluting oil monopoly may report huge profits, but be doing relatively little for the economy and damaging the environment. It would exhibit high economic profit but low social profit.

Accounting definitions of profit

Caution - these definitions are different from those used by economists In the accounting sense of the term, net profit (before tax) is the sales of the firm less costs like as wages, rent, fuel, raw materials, interest on loans and depreciation. Gross profit is profit before depreciation and interest, Net profit after tax is after the deduction of either corporate tax (for a company) or income tax (for an individual). Operating profit is a measure of a company's earning power from ongoing operations, equal to earnings before the deduction of interest payments and income taxes. To accountants, economic profit, or EP, is a single-period metric to determine the value created by a company in one period - usually a year. It is the net profit after tax less the equity charge, a risk-weighted cost of capital. This is almost identical to the economist's definition of economic profit. Some economists define further types of profit:
- Abnormal (or supernormal profit)
- Subnormal profit
- monopoly profit (super profit) Optimum Profit - This is the "right amount" of profit a business can achieve. In business, this figure takes account of marketing strategy, market position, and other methods of increasing returns above the competitive rate.

More varieties of profit

There are commentators who see benefit in making adjustments to economic profit such as eliminating the effect of amortised goodwill or capitalising expenditure on brand advertising to show it's value over multiple accounting periods. The underlying concept was first been introduced by Schmalenbach, but the commercial application of the concept of adjusted economic profit was by Stern Stewart & Co. which has trade-marked their adjusted economic profit as EVA or Economic Value Added.

See also


- Income
- Economic Value Added
- superprofit
- surplus-value Category:Profit Category:Accounting

Oral tradition

Oral tradition or oral culture is a way of transmitting history, literature or law from one generation to the next in a civilization without a writing system. A example that combined aspects of oral literature and oral history, before eventually being set down in writing, is the Homeric epic poetry of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Oral tradition also falls under the domain of Folklore.

See also


- Oral history
- Traditional knowledge
- Intangible culture
- Secondary orality
- Oral law
- Folklore
- Vedas

18th century

As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to the century that lasted from 1701 through 1800 in the Gregorian calendar. European history scholars will sometimes specifically refer to the 18th century as 1715-1789, denoting the period of time between the death of Louis XIV of France and the start of the French Revolution.

Events


- 1701-14: War of the Spanish Succession
- 1703: Saint Petersburg founded by Peter the Great. Russian capital until 1918.
- 1707: Act of Union passed merging the Scottish and the English Parliaments, thus establishing The Kingdom of Great Britain.
- 1707: After Aurangzeb's death, the Mughal Empire enters a long decline.
- 1715: Louis XIV dies
- 1718: City of New Orleans founded by the French in North America
- 1720: The South Sea Bubble
- 1721: Robert Walpole becomes the first Prime Minister of Great Britain (de facto).
- 1721: Treaty of Nystad signed, ending the Great Northern War.
- 1722: Afghans conquer Iran, ending the Safavid dynasty.
- 1722: Kangxi Emperor of China dies.
- 1733-38: War of the Polish Succession
- 1735-99: The Qianlong Emperor of China oversees a huge expansion in territory.
- 1736: Nadir Shah assumes title of Shah of Persia and founds the Afsharid dynasty. Rules until his death in 1747.
- 1739: Nadir Shah defeats the Mughals and sacks Delhi.
- 1740: Frederick the Great crowned King of Prussia.
- 1740-48: War of the Austrian Succession
- 1741: Russians begin settling the Aleutian Islands.
- 1747: Ahmad Shah founds the Durrani Empire in modern day Afghanistan.
- 1750: peak of the Little Ice Age
- 1755: The Lisbon earthquake
- 1756-63: Seven Years' War fought among European powers in various theaters around the world.
- 1757: Battle of Plassey signals the beginning of British rule in India.
- 1760: George III becomes King of Britain.
- 1762-96: Reign of Catherine the Great of Russia.
- 1763-66: Pontiac's Rebellion in North America
- 1766-99: Anglo-Mysore Wars
- 1767: Burmese conquer the Ayutthaya kingdom.
- 1768: Gurkhas conquer Nepal.
- 1768-1774: Russo-Turkish War
- 1769: Spanish missionaries establish the first of 21 missions in California.
- 1772-95: The Partitions of Poland end the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and erase Poland from the map for 123 years.
- 1775-82: First Anglo-Maratha War
- 1775-83: American Revolution
- 1779-1879: Cape Frontier Wars between British and Boer settlers and the Xhosas in South Africa
- 1785-95: Northwest Indian War between the United States and Native Americans
- 1787: Freed slaves from London found Freetown in present-day Sierra Leone.
- 1788: First European settlement established in Australia at Sydney.
- 1789: George Washington elected President of the United States. Serves until 1797.
- 1789-99: The French Revolution
- 1791-1804: The Haitian Revolution
- 1792-1815: The Great French War starts as the French Revolutionary Wars which lead into the Napoleonic Wars.
- 1792: New York Stock & Exchange Board founded.
- 1793: Upper Canada bans slavery.
- 1795: Pinckney's Treaty between the United States and Spain grants the Mississippi Territory to the US.
- 1796: British eject Dutch from Ceylon.
- 1796-1804: White Lotus Rebellion in China.
- 1797: Napoleon's invasion and partition of the Republic of Venice ends over 1,000 years of independence for the Serene Republic.
- 1798: Irish Rebellion against British Rule
- 1798-1800: Quasi-War between the United States and France.
- 1799: Napoleon stages a coup d'état and becomes dictator of France.
- 1799: Dutch East India Company is dissolved.

Significant people


- Ueda Akinari (Japanese writer)
- Queen Anne (British monarch)
- Marie Antoinette (French royalty and symbol of anti-Revolutionary ire)
- Benedict Arnold, considered a traitor by many people on both sides (United States and Britain) of the American Revolutionary War.
- Johann Sebastian Bach (composer)
- Pierre Beaumarchais (French writer)
- Jeremy Bentham (English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer)
- Napoleon Bonaparte (general and first consul of France)
- François Boucher (French painter)
- Edmund Burke (British statesman and philosopher who supported the American Revolution)
- Robert Burns (Scottish poet)
- Catherine the Great (Russian Tsaritsa)
- James Cook (British navigator)
- Denis Diderot (French writer and philosopher)
- Leonhard Euler (mathematician)
- Jean-Honoré Fragonard (French painter)
- Benjamin Franklin (American revolutionary, inventor, printer, and diplomat)
- Frederick the Great (Prussian monarch)
- Thomas Gainsborough (painter)
- King George III (British monarch)
- Christoph Willibald Gluck (German composer)
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German writer)
- Thomas Gray (British writer)
- George Frideric Handel (German composer)
- Alexander Hamilton (American revolutionary, lawyer, and statesman)
- Joseph Haydn (Austrian composer)
- William Hogarth (painter and engraver)
- David Hume (philosopher)
- Thomas Jefferson (American revolutionary, philosopher, and statesman)
- Samuel Johnson (British writer and literary critic)
- Immanuel Kant (philosopher)
- Wolfgang von Kempelen (Hungarian scientist, pioneer in experimental phonetics)
- John Law (Scottish economist)
- Louis XIV of France (monarch)
- Louis XV of France (monarch)
- Louis XVI of France (monarch)
- James Madison (American revolutionary, writer, and statesman)
- Maria Theresa of Austria (Holy Roman Empress, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia)
- Michikinikwa (Miami tribe chief and war leader)
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (composer)
- Thomas Paine (British intellectual and philosopher who advocated for the American Revolution)
- Philip II, Duke of Orléans (Regent of France)
- Alexander Pope (British poet)
- Francis II Rákóczi (prince of Hungary and Transylvania, leader of the Hungarian freedom war)
- Jean-Philippe Rameau (French composer and music theorist)
- Sir Joshua Reynolds (painter)
- Maximilien Robespierre (French Revolutionary leader and dictator)
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau (French writer and philosopher)
- Friedrich Schiller (German writer)
- John Small, Sr (Hambledon cricketer; the first great batsman)
- Adam Smith (Scottish economist and philosopher)
- Laurence Sterne (British writer)
- Edward "Lumpy" Stevens (Surrey cricketer; the first great bowler)
- Jonathan Swift (Anglo-Irish satirist)
- Tecumseh (Revolutionary)
- Voltaire (French writer and philosopher)
- George Washington (American revolutionary general and first president)
- John Wesley (Founder of Methodism, Anglican clergyman, English reformer, scholar, theologian and writer) See Founding Fathers of the United States

Inventions, discoveries, introductions

List of 18th century inventions
- Industrial Revolution begins
- The Encyclopédie by the Encyclopedists
- The English Dictionary by Samuel Johnson
- Economics by Adam Smith
- Rosetta stone discovered by Napoleon's troops.
- Vitus Bering discovered Alaska.
- James Cook mapped the boundaries of the Pacific Ocean and discovered many Pacific Islands.
- Wahhabism by Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab

Decades and years


- Category:Centuries Category:Industrial Revolution Category:Romanticism ko:18세기 ja:18世紀 th:คริสต์ศตวรรษที่ 18

German language

German (German: ), is a member of the western group of Germanic languages and is one of the world's major languages. It is the language with the most native speakers in the European Union. Spoken by more than 130 million people in 38 countries of the world, German is—like English—a pluricentric language with three main centers of usage: Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Geographic distribution

German is spoken primarily in Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, in two-thirds of Switzerland, in two-thirds of the South Tyrol province of Italy (in German, Südtirol), in the small East Cantons of Belgium, and in some border villages of the South Jutland County (in German, Nordschleswig, in Danish, Sønderjylland) of Denmark. In Luxembourg (in German, Luxemburg), as well as in the French régions of Alsace (in German, Elsass) and parts of Lorraine (in German, Lothringen), the native populations speak several German dialects, and some people also master standard German (especially in Luxembourg), although in Alsace and Lorraine French has for the most part replaced the local German dialects in the last 40 years. Some German speaking communities still survive in parts of Romania, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and above all Russia, Kazakhstan and Poland, although massive relocations to Germany in the late 1940s and 1990s have depopulated most of these communities. Outside of Europe and the former Soviet Union, the largest German speaking communities are to be found in the USA and in Brazil where millions of Germans migrated in the last 200 years; but the great majority of their descendants no longer speak German. Additionally, German speaking communities are to be found in the former German colony of Namibia, as well as in the other countries of German emigration such as Canada, Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, Peru, Venezuela (where Alemán Coloneiro developed), Thailand, and Australia. See also Plautdietsch. In the USA, the largest concentration of German speakers are in Pennsylvania (Amish, Hutterites and some Mennonites speak Pennsylvania German and Hutterite German), Texas (Texas German), North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wisconsin and Indiana also speak dialects of German. In Brazil the largest concentrations of German speakers are in Rio Grande do Sul, where Riograndenser Hunsrückisch was developed, Santa Catarina, Paraná, and Espírito Santo). Generally, German immigrant communities in the USA have lost their mother tongue more quickly than those who moved to South America, possibly due to the fact that for Germans English is easier to learn than Portuguese or Spanish. German is the main language of about 100 million people in Europe (as of 2004), or 13.3% of all Europeans, being the most spoken language in Europe excluding Russia, above French (66.5 million speakers in Europe in 2004) and English (64.2 million speakers in Europe in 2004). German is the third most taught foreign language worldwide, also in the USA (after Spanish and French); it is the second most known foreign language in the EU (after English; see [http://europa.eu.int/comm/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_237.en.pdf]) It is one of the official languages of the European Union.

History

As a consequence of the colonisation patterns the Völkerwanderung, the routes for trade and communication (chiefly the rivers), and of physical isolation (high mountains and deep forests) very different regional dialects developed. These dialects, sometimes mutually unintelligible, were used across the Holy Roman Empire. As Germany was divided into many different states, the only force working for a unification or standardisation of German during a period of several hundred years was the general preference of writers trying to write in a way that could be understood in the largest possible area. When Martin Luther translated the Bible (the New Testament in 1521 and the Old Testament in 1534) he based his translation mainly on this already developed language, which was the most widely understood language at this time. This language was based on Eastern Upper and Eastern Central German dialects and preserved much of the grammatical system of Middle High German (unlike the spoken German dialects in Central and Upper Germany that already at that time began to lose the genitive case and the preterit tense). In the beginning, copies of the Bible had a long list for each region, which translated words unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Roman Catholics rejected Luther's translation in the beginning and tried to create their own Catholic standard (Gemeines Deutsch) — which, however, only differed from 'Protestant German' in some minor details. It took until the middle of the 18th century to create a standard that was widely accepted, thus ending the period of Early New High German. German used to be the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe. Until the mid-19th century it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of the Empire. It indicated that the speaker was a merchant, an urbanite, not their nationality. Some cities, such as Prague (German: Prag) and Budapest (Buda, German: Ofen), were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain. Others, such as Bratislava (German: Pressburg), were originally settled during the Habsburg period and were primarily German at that time. A few cities such as Milan (German: Mailand) remained primarily non-German. However, most cities were primarily German during this time, such as Prague, Budapest, Bratislava, Zagreb (German: Agram), and Ljubljana (German: Laibach), though they were surrounded by territory that spoke other languages. Until about 1800, Standard German was almost only a written language. In this time, people in urban northern Germany, who spoke dialects very different from Standard German, learnt it almost like a foreign language and tried to pronounce it as close to the spelling as possible. Prescriptive pronunciation guides used to consider that northern German pronunciation to be the standard. However, the actual pronunciation of standard German varies from region to region. Media and written works are almost all produced in standard German (often called Hochdeutsch in German), which is understood in all areas of German languages (except by pre-school children in areas which speak only dialect, for example Switzerland — but in this age of TV, even they now usually learn to understand Standard German before school age). The first dictionary of the Brothers Grimm, the 16 parts of which were issued between 1852 and 1960, remains the most comprehensive guide to the words of the German language. In 1860, grammatical and orthographic rules first appeared in the Duden Handbook. In 1901, this was declared the standard definition of the German language. Official revisions of some of these rules were not issued until 1998, when the German spelling reform of 1996 was officially promulgated by governmental representatives of all German-speaking countries. Since the reform, German spelling has been in an eight-year transitional period where the reformed spelling is taught in most schools, while traditional and reformed spelling co-exist in the media. See German spelling reform of 1996 for an overview of the heated public debate concerning the reform. During the 1870s, the German language successfully replaced Latin as the dominant language in all major European and North American universities, thanks to the prominence of German universities at the time. Most important research in the sciences for some decades afterward was published in German, and new universities preferred German instead of Greek or Latin mottoes (for example, Stanford University).

Classification and related languages

Stanford University is divided into Upper German (blue) and Central German (green), and the Dutch/Plattdüütsch (yellow). The main isoglosses, the Benrath and Speyer lines are marked in red.]] German is a member of the western branch of the Germanic family of languages, which in turn is part of the Indo-European language family.

Neighboring languages

German forms together with Dutch, its closest relative, a coherent and well-defined language area that is separated from its neighbors by language borders. These neighbors are: in the north Frisian and Danish; in the east Polish, Sorbian, Czech, Slovak, and Hungarian; in the south Slovenian, Italian, Friulian, Ladin, and