Folk is a broad musical genre that includes traditional songs—many of them transmitted orally, with unkown composers—from around the world. Perhaps the most popular form of music music emerged in the United States during the revival of the 1950s and ‘60s, when performers like Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, and Joni Mitchell rose to prominence. Contemporary singer-songwriters and bands like Aoife O’Donovan, Allison Russell, and the Milk Carton Kids continue to take folk in new directions.
"Fortune Turns the Wheel" is simple, and the sung melody needs little in the way of instrumental propulsion, so the guitar setting is spare in this arrangement.
This blues lick is fairly easy to play on guitar, and when played well can create a very evocative sound that will add movement and interest to your accompaniment.
Passed down from the late 1800s, the folk ballad “John Henry” tells the story of a Black steel driver who dies in an effort to best a steam drill in laying down steel for the construction of a railroad. Henry is thought to have been a real person, whose proof…
Bob Dylan's great acoustic guitar playing is often overlooked. Here we showcase his deceptive chord moves, his fluency with standard and non-standard tunings, and his knack for constant reinvention.
Here are tips for playing Bob Dylan's "Tangled up in Blue," as arranged on The Bootleg Series, Vol. 14 in an intimate and intense version with just guitar, harmonica and bass.
Audiences at the Woodstock Festival in August of 1969 were treated to Arlo Guthrie’s languid folk-country version, the inspiration behind the arrangement shown here.
As with any folk accompaniment, you needn’t bother with playing exactly what’s on the printed page. It would sound overly studied to play things note for note.
Inspired by a passage in the Saul Bellow novel 'Henderson the Rain King', Joni Mitchell penned what would become one of her most popular songs in 1966.
Ledward Kaapana's rendition encapsulates a lot of what’s great about slack-key guitar: a sweet melody propped up by a rolling Travis-style bass line, chiming harmonics, and subtle ornamentals.
All steel-string guitarists should have at least one fiddle tune in their repertoire, so if you happen to be lacking one, then this is a good place to start.
This song is a prime example of 'son jarocho'—a folk style, from the Mexican state of Veracruz, typically played on guitar-like instruments such as the jarana jarocha.
Mariachi guitar is very special,” Eunice Aparicio says. She should know—she’s been playing mariachi music for 17 years. Aparicio is the guitarrón player in the Latin Grammy-nominated all-female mariachi band Flor de Toloache. But for several years she’s studied mariachi guitar with teachers from across Mexico, where the tradition is…
