Folk punk
| Folk punk | |
|---|---|
| Stylistic origins | |
| Cultural origins | Mid-1980s, United Kingdom and United States |
| Typical instruments | |
| Derivative forms | |
| Other topics | |
Folk punk (known in its early days as rogue folk) is a fusion of folk music and punk rock. It was popularized in the early 1980s by The Pogues in Britain, and by Violent Femmes in the United States. Folk punk achieved some mainstream success in that decade. In more recent years, its subgenres Celtic punk and Gypsy punk have experienced some commercial success.
Unlike Celtic rock and electric folk, folk punk tends to include relatively little traditional music in its repertoire. Most folk punk musicians perform their own compositions, in the style of punk rock, but using additional folk instruments, such as mandolins, accordions, banjos or violins. Nevertheless, some folk punk bands have adopted traditional forms of folk music, including sea shanties and eastern European Gypsy music.
In 1977 London born singer-songwriter Patrik Fitzgerald released his first EP titled Safety-Pin Stuck in My Heart which was subtitled "a love song for punk music". The titular song from the EP still remains Fitzgerald's most famous work and acted as one of the pioneering releases for folk punk by combining punk rock imagery with acoustic guitar and vocals.
Formed in Milwaukee in 1980, Violent Femmes was one of the first and most commercially successful bands to fuse punk and folk, though much of their influence came more from early art rock acts like The Velvet Underground. During the 1980s other punk and hardcore bands would pepper their albums with acoustic tracks or inject folksier sounds, notably The Dead Milkmen, Hüsker Dü, and Articles of Faith. An influential album was the punk inflected folk-country album released in 1984 when psychedelic hardcore band The Meat Puppets switched their style for their seminal release Meat Puppets II.
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