Folk Rock is a hybrid genre that combines features from both folk and rock; it has been around since the mid 1960’s. Folk Rock started in the USA and UK and was popular with a mainstream audience into the early 70’s; at one point between these two times it was one of the most popular genres of music in the charts. The genre was started by the Los Angeles band The Byrd’s, who took some of Bob Dylan’s folk music and added rock instrumentals to the backing music. Recently, especially in the UK Folk rock has started to make a comeback with new artists such as Mumford and Sons.
The stereotypical clothing worn by the members of a folk rock band is very vintage clothes. Items of clothing that stick to these conventions continue even now, despite the change in times in which the genre has been popular. Band members will be typically dressed in items such as collared shirts, waistcoats and trousers, and will conventionally look like the 1930's working class, although at the same time they still wear clothes which come from the current era like straight cut jeans. The haircuts that folk rock artists are also similar to that of the 1930's which was when folk music was most popular prior to its comeback through folk rock. Trilby’s are popular within folk rock bands, and are regularly seen in music videos especially with the more modern artists. The clothes and haircuts are only partially vintage, as the clothes are almost always reproductions of vintage clothing, and hair products and other modern styles will be used by the bands.
The music styles of folk rock are traditional folk sounding music with electric instruments such as guitars and keyboards. There are different styles of folk rock, as with the work of The Byrd’s the music had some quite hard rock, whereas Mumford and sons is quieter because of the use of acoustic instruments such as the acoustic guitar, the banjo, ukulele, fiddle and harmonica. The music that is produced by folk rock is quite easy listening, and has catchy music because of the instruments. A convention of the music that is not common in most genres is the way that the music can be performed when live. At the Brit Awards in 2011 Mumford and sons performed the song timshel unplugged with just an acoustic guitar and banjo on stage. This is not a convention found in many other genres of music because they rely on computer generated music and electric amplifiers etc.
The audience that would stereotypically listen to this genre today would be an indie niche audience. The indie scene are as a stereotype usually listeners to the indie rock genre, however modern folk rock artists are attracting this similar audience. Original Folk rock artists such as Creedence Clearwater revival and the beach boys are still followed today; this is again by a niche audience, usually by a similar indie audience who listen to vintage style music. At the time of these artists been in the charts, they were still attracting a very large mainstream audience and so the genre was popular and would have been played constantly on the radio and so over time the conventions of this genre can been seen to shift, which is common within all music genre’s.
Because of the conventions that point to the vintage side of the genre, music videos for artists in this genre often contain travel. Travel was obviously a key thing in 1930’s America as it was then when American’s were moving around to find work, and they would often have to walk great lengths through countryside. Villages and Towns are shown a lot more often than big cities in the artist’s videos, this is again a reference to the vintage side of the genre because the people who lived in the cities where stereotypically too rich to have to travel to earn money and make a living.
