Folk baroque

Folk baroque or baroque guitar is the name given to a distinctive and influential guitar fingerstyle developed in Britain in the 1960s, which combined elements of American folk, blues, jazz and ragtime with British traditional music to produce a new and elaborate form of accompaniment. It has been highly important in folk music, folk rock and electric folk playing, particularly in Britain, Ireland, North America and France.

Particularly notable in the folk baroque style was the adoption of DADGAD tuning (from lowest highest strings), which gave a form of suspended-fourth D chord, usefully neither major or minor, which could be employed as the basis for modal based folk songs. It is uncertain who first developed this tuning, as both Davy Graham and Martin Carthy attributed it to each other, but it has been speculated that Graham may have acquired it from the oud while visiting north Africa. This was combined with a fingerstyle based on Travis picking and a focus on melody, that made it suitable as an accompaniment.Robin Denselow, who popularized the phrase ‘folk baroque’, singled out Graham's recording of traditional English folk song ‘Seven Gypsies’ on Folk, Blues and Beyond (1964) as the beginning of the style.

Many of the English folk musicians who emerged in the early 1960s as part of the Second British folk revival began their careers in the short lived skiffle craze of the later 1950s and as a result were familiar with American blues, folk and jazz styles. Initially they copied these styles, occasionally using open D and G tunings, but by the early 1960s a distinctive way of playing acoustic guitar began to emerge as performers like Davy Graham and Martin Carthy attempted to apply these styles to the playing of traditional English modal music. They were soon followed by artists such as Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, who further defined the style.

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