The Idea of Folk Music

This chapter uncovers the emergence and early history of the terms folk song and folk music in English during the nineteenth century as they circulated across the Atlantic and around the globe. One person in particular was responsible for this discourse: the prolific author and translator Mary Howitt. I show that these terms initially emerged in direct reference to the German Volkslieder, though they were not associated explicitly with the work of Johann Gottfried Herder nor with any particular nation or region. I use this material to argue that folk music was neither a repertoire nor an idiom, but rather an idea conditioned by Romantic thought. Indeed, it was the concept of folk music that most enchanted writers during this period – writers who were never of the folk they depicted. These terms are a nostalgic reply or retort to the interlaced revolutions and encounters that have defined modernity. Ultimately, this history exemplifies a long intellectual struggle in the West over the meaning and musical significance of working-class culture, nature, time, and colonial alterity.