Historian to bring folk music traditions to life

Hooksett Editor — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 19:49:00 GMT

BY TOBY HENRY

A Seacoast-area multi-instrumentalist and music historian will entertain a local audience with a form of music that he said dates back many centuries.

Although many people associate folk music with the revival in acoustic guitar-based music in the 1950s and 1960s with artists like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Phil Ochs, Portsmouth resident Jeff Warner said the true roots of this genre date back to the 1500s. Warner, who will be speaking and performing at the Auburn Historical Association’s Nov. 14 meeting, said folk music is a form of “living history.”

After traditional folk music originated in Europe, Warner said it was brought with people in the areas where they settled, and this was much the case in the New Hampshire of many years ago as settlers began to arrive. At the upcoming society meeting, Warner said he plans to focus on the songs that would have been played by the earlier generations of Granite State residents.

“For the most part, the songs were about the work people did -- whaling, being a farmer,” Warner said in a recent interview. “These were songs that people sang when they were plowing or driving the cows home. They’re evocative of their time ... in that many of those trades and ways of living are no longer around now.”

Warner said the songs that were popular in the area more than a century ago borrowed heavily from Irish and African- American influences, and the relatively simple choruses sometimes contained a very complex message about life during that era. First and foremost, Warner said, this music was about “community- building.”

Today, he conveys these time-honored songs using a variety of instruments, including the concertina, banjo and “bones” -- a type of percussion instrument made of cow femur. While traditional folk music proved to be a popular form for several centuries, Warner said it ultimately could not compete with radio, and the first commercial broadcasts in the 1920s signaled the beginning of the end of traditional folk music as the dominant musical force in America.

“Basically, it succumbed to popular music when radio came out,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean it was wiped out instantly. You could still find pockets of it here and there, and even today you can still go to many communities and find square dancing.”

The Nov. 14 performance is free and open to the public and will take place at the Auburn Historical Association at 102 Hooksett Road at 7:30 p.m.

Auburn News : folk music

Historian to bring folk music traditions to life