WHAT IS AUSTRALIAN FOLK MUSIC IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY?
© Warren Fahey This, of course, is a difficult question to ask for in the over two hundred years since the establishment of the European settlement, and over a hundred years since the golden era of ‘bush’ songs, the world has shifted and the world of entertainment has taken a quantum leap. I have never liked the descriptive ‘Australian folk’ because folk music has connotations that do not sit comfortably with our young country and the types of music that have evolved. There’s an old adage that says; line up ten folklorists and ask them for a description and you’ll get ten different descriptions. the same would apply to a description of our traditional music. Readers should refer to my detailed article on the use of descriptive names in the Australian folk revival for at least some directions. If we use the phrase ‘traditional music’ one direction would be that this music, or at least the story songs and ballads, tell us of our communal history, primarily our emotional history. Like the
