In Praise of Folk Music: Anti-Fable

Jun 25, 2024

I picked up guitar 3 years ago as a Covid hobby. To keep a long story short, after many hours of practice and few years of playing guitar I found there was another instrument whose voice spoke to me - the banjo. I decided I was going to do some research and save up to purchase one. In the weeks leading up to purchasing a banjo I needed to decide which style of banjo I was going to get. I think the decision of what instrument you should learn, particularly in adult learners, should be informed by the learner's musical taste, as the symbiotic relationship between listening to and learning music will help solidify habit formation. This means running through your Spotify playlist and taking stock of which instruments are primarily involved in your favorite songs. Want to learn the saxophone? I commend you. How many songs on your playlist are centered around the sax? Two? I'm not sure the habit will stick. Forty-Five? That is probably sufficient. If your count is that high chances are you are already a big Jazz fan, and a bit of a nerd - so I think you have a fighting chance.

I went through my own version of this process with the banjo music. What attracted me to the instrument? Was it the tinny sound of metal picks quickly plucking metal strings. Was it the prodigious playing of three iron-clad fingers ripping 8th and 16th notes at 130 bpm? Was it a third alliterative example written for the sake of symmetry? With all due respect to those who would answer in the affirmative - no.

I discovered my musical preferences favored a more melodic, temperate, mellow style of playing dubbed "Clawhammer". I started diving into the clawhammer style of playing and learned that it was heavily connected to a sub-genre of folk music called old time. As my musical tastes informed my playing and my playing informed my musical tastes I gained an ever growing affinity for old time/folk music, both early recordings and current revivals of traditional tunes. The genre has a rich history of European ballads mixed with African influence and has culminated in wonderful combo of classic tunes that informed the ethos of early American immigrants.

As a Christian ,and thereby a conscientious listener of music, I wanted to do some thinking on the relationship between the new genre of music I was listening to and my Christian ethic. After all, my theology should inform my musical tastes, not the other way around. It is good to be cautious, particularly when much folk music deals with gritty topics such as:

Love
Friendship
Loyalty
Whiskey
Betrayal
Rivalry
Hate
And other chiasms...

Some of these things I approve of, others I don't. This begs the question like a two year old pulling at your pant leg: How might I partake in music which sings about actions of which I would disapprove? I think this is actually a more complex topic that could use a longer treatment sometime down the road, but in short - We must speak of murder to condemn it. Level of detail, central focus, and context determine if singing about murder etc... is obscene, or is a part of training stable sentiments. I have come to the conclusion that folk music is largely the latter, and so I still find it within my Christian liberty to listen. However, I would like to go a step beyond a question of permissibility. I want to ask: is it beneficial? Would I let my children listen to these songs as a part of their moral education? entertainment? I would again say yes, and I would like to offer up some reasons in this multi-part series.

First, some disclaimers are afoot: 12

Anti-Fable:

Folk songs often approach storytelling in a minimal and understated manner. Stories of loss, love, crime, deep tragedy will be told as plain fact, often times without specific moral weight being given to any one action or event. One might feel the need to pull back from this approach to storytelling for fear of confusion, but I think understatedness has an aesthetic advantage that fables don't.

Fables obviously have their place. Moral sentiments do need to be cultivated in children (and adults), and clear moral instruction is a part of that cultivation3. However, a problem with fables is that they place readers behind the transparent side of a one-way mirror. The reader, the observer, follows the narrative with an elevated understanding of the moral gravity behind the characters' actions. We have a degree of omniscience as we watch the foolish sleeping rabbit being passed by a determined turtle willing to tramp to the finish line. Yet this is not how we experience life. Moral decisions often will present themselves in an understated way. Many times it isn't apparent that there is a moral decision being made at all.

This is why I am comfortable with folk songs speaking moral truth through a veil. While the moral implications of actions in these songs are often not highlighted or clearly explained, they do exist, and they are waiting for the listener to draw them out. We are dealing with musicians, not didacts. We should not impose undue standards of clarity or prima facie moralizing upon artistic works of a different genre. We should allow these works to be experienced through the language of emotion: music.

This experiential component is key, for the supporting element of music can sustain otherwise very simplistic poetry. Print off the lyrics of some of your favorite songs and read them outside of the musical context, hint: they are often less inspiring. The addition of creative melodies and supporting harmonies allow truth to be communicated and felt bone-deep even amidst simple poetry and prose.

Some Examples:

Rye Whiskey: At first blush, and depending upon what version you hear, this song might appear to praise drunkenness and folly. After listening to this song it is evident (imo) that it doesn't praise, but rather portrays the follies of drunkenness. The protagonist proclaims his love of rye whiskey, and just how plastered he would get if rye whiskey was a naturally occurring phenomenon. It is fair that my fellow Baptists are hesitant at first, but further along in the song we find whiskey to be the cause of a dissipated life. Whiskey anthropomorphized has robbed him, beaten him up, broken his nose etc... This speaks more about the danger of our sin nature than ethanol, but the point stands. See Proverbs 23:29-35

Been All Around this World: Not the Jerry Garcia version. The folk version is an opaque story of a murderer being hanged for his crimes. The indifferent attitude the murderer takes towards his punishment is startling. Like all folk songs there are many versions in circulation with many floating verses. In this particular version I believe the protagonists blasé attitude turns into a vision of remorse in the last verse. The song stops short of repentance, but so do many men. Remember - these aren't fables. There is a lesson to be learned even so.

Wild Bill Jones: An modern example of the mild-manner story telling common to folk songs. This song handles serious events in a way that doesn’t directly cue the listener a clear moral assessment of these events. Not that they don’t exist, but the lessons must be drawn out.

I don’t have children who are old enough to comprehend the lyrics in these songs. I am theorizing about what I think would be beneficial to their development, but I am not one who has experiential wisdom in this arena. Maybe I change my mind once my kids are old enough to start understanding some of these songs. If you are a parent who has some well-worn wisdom in this area I always love insight.

The examples I will be posting in this series are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to folk songs. Folk music is such a broad genre that there are plenty of examples of folk songs that are irredeemable and have no moral value. I don’t think that is reason enough to discard generations of tradition.

“Precepts, like fomentations, must be rubbed into us - and with a rough hand too”

-Marquis of Halifax