American Folk Music

Folk Revival

The great folksong revival of the 1940s through 1960s made rural white and African American artists and their music favorites of audiences everywhere. While key figures associated with the American folksong revival, such as Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Alan Lomax, and Moses Asch, were white, the music traditions on which they drew were frequently African American as well as Anglo-American. Lead Belly is perhaps the best known name of the African Americans that helped define the genre, but you'll also find portraits of Mississippi John Hurt, Odetta, and Joshua Daniel White, and music by Bill McAdoo and Bernice Reagon, among others.