Folk music

Folk music means "music of the folk," and is especially associated with two separate, but related phenomena: the "folk music scene" that got started in the 1950s and 1960s with groups like The Weavers, and the much older sort of music that is passed from generation to generation by ear, and sometimes called traditional music. Indeed, "folk music" is used with many different, and sometimes incompatible meanings, probably because there is naturally disagreement about who "the folk" are, and how distantly related music might be and still remain "of" the folk.