Folk Music

Latest Articles

One night, one jazz trifecta

True, there aren't enough paying gigs for musicians, but the live music is out there — and last Wednesday, I had to scramble to make three promising shows.
Taylor Eigsti, the October Trio, and the BC Quintet
By JON GARELICK | July 02, 2010

Summer treats

From Andean to zydeco, pick your flavor and there's a summer music festival ready to serve it up.
Whether classical, jazz, pop, or folk, 'tis the season to get out and enjoy the music
By CLEA SIMON | June 18, 2010

Love by the numbers

Khaela Maricich, of the Portland, Oregon-based, low-budget electro-pop group the Blow, and Britain’s dauntingly young and talented folk star Laura Marling don’t, frankly, deserve to be lumped together like this.
The Blow and Laura Marling make their cases at SPACE Gallery
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY | May 07, 2010

Alejandro Franov | Digitaria

Alejandro Franov is an Argentine multi-instrumentalist who's been involved in the more serious, and often experimental, side of the Buenos Aires music scene since he was a teen in the late 1980s.
Nature Bliss (2010)
By GUSTAVO TURNER | March 05, 2010

In good Company

Dark Hollow Bottling Company take a piece of their name from an old-school folk/bluegrass tune, "Dark Hollow," possibly made most famous by the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia's Old and in the Way , but also recorded as early as 1926, with popular versio
Dark Hollow Bottling debut a new old-time sound
By SAM PFEIFLE | February 26, 2010

Slow emotion

Whatever happened to good old-fashioned reflection?
John Cunningham’s songs are worth the wait
By JONATHAN DONALDSON | January 15, 2010

The Big Hurt: The decade ahead

As a new decade dawns, it's time to cast a curious eye toward the future.
Music predictions for the pubescent millennium
By DAVID THORPE | January 15, 2010

Review: Carmen Consoli at Regattabar

How Italian was the crowd at Carmen Consoli's sold-out Regattabar show? The language was everywhere. The couple from Methuen sharing our table were 50 percent, and the Italian husband estimated the room at 90 percent. (I was guessing 85.)
Carmen Consoli, Live at Regattabar, January 7, 2010
By JON GARELICK | January 15, 2010

Photos: Devendra Banhart at Berklee

Photos of Devendra Banhart at the Berklee Performance Center.
Devendra Banhart, live at Berklee Performance Center, November 20, 2009
By BRAD MINTZ | November 27, 2009

Review: Suzanne Vega at Sanders Theatre

At the request of former Czech President Vaclav Havel, folk/alt-rock legend Suzanne Vega performed in Prague on Saturday with the likes of Lou Reed and Joan Baez to honor the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution.
Suzanne Vega, live at Harvard's Sanders Theatre, November 6, 2009
By CARRIE BATTAN | November 20, 2009

Mars vs. Venus

It’s been 21 years since Speed-the-Plow first milked the cravenness of Hollywood and the self-described “whores” who turn its celluloid tricks. But David Mamet’s scathing, staccato comedy has held up at least as well as Madonna, who made her Broadway d
Speed-the-Plow; The Taming of the Shrew; A Long and Winding Road
By CAROLYN CLAY | October 30, 2009

The road not taken

Shooting Star , by Steven Deitz, got its title from a Bob Dylan lyric that speaks of poignant regret.
A brief encounter in Trinity’s Shooting Star
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | October 30, 2009

Love at second sight?

The little two-person play that Trinity Repertory Company is staging in the intimate downstairs theater got its title from the poignant Bob Dylan song "Shooting Star."
Chemistry is key in Trinity’s Shooting Star
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | October 16, 2009

Heat wave

"It's so hot!" Bat for Lashes multi-instrumentalist frontwoman Natasha Khan was sweating it out between songs en route to her piano stage left. "So are you!" yelled a girl in the crowd.
Bat for Lashes, live at Paradise Rock Club, August 13, 2009
By DANIEL BROCKMAN | August 21, 2009

Woody Guthrie | My Dusty Road

The agit-pop songwriter of "This Land Is Your Land," "Going Down the Road," "Pretty Boy Floyd," "Philadelphia Lawyer," and a passel of other bedrock American folk classics carried a business card that identified him as "Woody, Th' Dustiest of the Dustb
Rounder (2009)
By TED DROZDOWSKI | August 21, 2009

Adrian Soiza and Dani Umpi | Dramatica

Uruguay, a small nation often shadowed by neighbors Argentina and Brazil, is home to a thriving music scene that has produced some of the best performers and composers of the "southern cone" of South America.
Los Años Luz (2009)
By GUSTAVO TURNER | August 21, 2009

Covering the bottom end - and the bottom line

The biggest news made by the Newport Jazz and Folk Festivals the past two weekends was that they happened at all.
Newport Jazz comes back with a bang
By JON GARELICK | August 14, 2009

Review: Buffy Sainte-Marie | Running for the Drum

Recent live appearances by Buffy Sainte-Marie show her, once again, setting herself apart from early colleagues like Joan Baez and Judy Collins.
Appleseed (2009)
By GUSTAVO TURNER | August 14, 2009

The music man

Forty years after a half-million hippies descended on a sprawling dairy farm in upstate New York, Woodstock has become shorthand for an entire epoch.
George Wein, the father of American music festivals, reflects on bringing world-class folk and jazz (and more) to Newport
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | August 07, 2009

Photos: George Wein's Folk Festival 2009

Photos from George Wein's 50th annual Folk Festival at Fort Adams State Park, Newport.
Photos of Deer Tick, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Judy Collins and more at the Newport folk festival
By RICHARD MCCAFFREY | August 07, 2009

The Dead Weather | Horehound

It's no coincidence that four of the 11 songs on the Dead Weather's debut — "I Cut like a Buffalo," "3 Birds," "Rocking Horse," and a cover of Bob Dylan's "New Pony" — make reference to the animal kingdom.
Third Man (2009)
By MIKAEL WOOD | July 24, 2009

Scholarship gigs

When in 1999 Björn Wennås moved from Sweden to Boston to study jazz guitar, he hardly imagined that he'd one day be playing in an ensemble that specializes in Italian folk music of the 12th to 19th centuries.
Newpoli and Steven Bernstein do their homework
By JON GARELICK | July 24, 2009

Primitive soul

Anne Siems's paintings are time machines teleporting you back to the early days of our American republic. In her show at Walker Contemporary, the German-born, Seattle-based artist channels the endearing awkwardness of artists like John Brewster Jr., wh
Anne Siems and the folk revival
By GREG COOK | July 17, 2009

Bibio | Ambivalence Avenue

Since this new record by Wolverhampton's Stephen James Wilkinson (a/k/a Bibio) has done nothing but delight me, I'm going to honor the sentiments posted to his MySpace blog and spare him the f-word and all variants thereof.
Warp (2009)
By MICHAEL BRODEUR | July 03, 2009

Art in America

The legend of the Old West's cowboys and Indians, flinty pioneers and buffalo killers, sheriffs and gunslingers started with the tall tales that cowboys themselves told of their glorious exploits.
From the Old West to middle-class guys
By GREG COOK | June 19, 2009

Trail of tunes

The best summer music festivals take something from the season: the smell of the surf, the sight of the mountains, fireworks, lawn seating — or, at least, fried dough.
Music al fresco at summer fests
By CLEA SIMON | June 12, 2009

Up in the County

Is it bluegrass if it doesn't have a banjo? Or a fiddle, for that matter? Hamilton County, a three-piece acoustic outfit who debut their first CD, Brokedown Breakdown , next week, sure do a good impersonation of a bluegrass band, even if purists might
Hamilton's Brokedown Breakdown
By SAM PFEIFLE | June 05, 2009

Harappian Night Recordings | The Glorious Gongs of Hainuwele

The trappings of exotic field recordings are all over this mysterious production.
Bo'Weavil (2009)
By GUSTAVO TURNER | May 08, 2009

Alt- together now

At some point during the recording of their new album, someone in the Broken Singles realized that Sarah Borges had been botching the chords to their cover of the Lemonheads' "Ride with Me."
Sarah Borges leaps ahead by getting back to basics
By MATT PARISH | April 10, 2009

Rootin' tootin' Hooten

Once a month, in the cramped A-frame attic of a house in Allston, folk singers from around New England gather to sing for each other.
Allston Folk at Home
By P. NICK CURRAN | April 01, 2009

Friends' Activity

Popular