Freak-folkies the Animal Collective have been known to declare that ‘it’s all folk’. iTunes says that, of my current collection, Bob Dylan, James Blackshaw, Bon Iver, Brightback Morning Light, Coco Rosie, Ewan McColl, Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, Jethro Tull, Joanna Newsom, Sababougnouma (Balafons And African Drums), Vashti Bunyan and U2 are all ‘folk’.

This tells me that folk can be Scottish, English, Irish, African, American, Native American; that folk can incoporate electric guitars, brass bands, balafons, drum machines, string orchestras, gospel choirs, Native American choirs and (on Bon Iver) something which sounds like a choir of Russian basses; that folk can be structurally complex (Jethro Tull, Fairport Convention), structurally simplistic, harmonically complex (Nick Drake, James Blackshaw), harmonically simplistic (Brightback Morning Light, Bob Dylan), rhythmically complex (Sababougnouma), rhythmically simplistic (Ewan McCall, Bob Dylan), lyrically complex (Joanna Newsome), lyrically simplistic or have no lyrics at all (Sababougnouma, James Blackshaw).

So seemingly folk can come from anywhere in the world, can feature any collection of instruments, and can have any type of musical constitution. In short, Itunes seems to agree with the Animal Collective. But surely it’s not all folk? Is Edgar Varese folk? Is Black Sabbath folk? Surely not. When someone says they ‘like’ folk music, what do they mean they like? (In what follows, I make some huge, sweeping generalisations about class and culture, but let me echo Pauline Kael in claiming that I’m painfully aware of the dangerously wide sweep of some of the suggestions I’m making. I employ them merely as paradigms, as a short hand allowing me to talk more quickly about what I believe are some of the interesting issues surrounding the context of folk in the 21st century.)

If we try to get close to what the term ‘folk’ actually connotes in 2008, (to the extent that it can be said simply to have one static meaning), the underlying notion that continually recurs in such excavations of meaning is surely that of ‘authenticity’. Attempts to define ‘folk’ are complicated further by the fact that there also seems to be different notions of ‘authenticity’ at play. There is what could be termed a ‘localised’ cultural authenticity: an emphasis on musical, instrumental or lyrical traditions arising from specific locations, as illustrated by the common nominal blurring between what might be termed ‘traditional’ music and ‘folk’.

Then there is ‘authenticity’ as represented by a relative simplicity of forces and arrangement; ‘authentic’ as opposed to convoluted and over-complicated. One categorising approach is merely to term anything with an acoustic guitar (and perhaps a violin) as folk. ‘Folk’ seems (although not always as in the case of Fairport Convention) to denote non-electrical instruments, and smaller, pub-sized arrangements, the kind to fit in non-specialised communal spaces. Perhaps there is even a vague notion of democracy underlying this conception of ‘authenticity’. For folk does not usually imply cultivated art technique, such as the relative complexities of tonality and orchestration sought by Western Art traditions (although these things have been added to the brew of folk fusions such as Talk Talk, Grizzly Bear and the Art Bears). Rather, ‘folk’ seems often to go hand in hand with the image of one person and a guitar; a focus on easily available instruments that everyone can or could play. Most people can afford a guitar and as such it’s a relatively equal, universal starting point for expression and creativity. By the same token, some suggest that the proliferation of software for making electronic music would perhaps make electronica the ‘folk’ music of our era.

To return to the place of ‘locality’ in notions of folk authenticity, descriptions of Tuareg group Tinariwen never seem to be able to extricate themselves from the circumstances of the music’s production. Reviews in Western media dwell on the desert home of the musicians and the political struggle of the Tuaregs (many of the Tinariwen fought in Tuareg uprisings and as a result their music has been illegal in Mali). I used to joke with my co-songwriter Duncan Strachan as to whether we could find more success if we made a big deal of the middle class locality which are music grew out of. Whilst the idea of the subsequent review is amusing (‘when I listen to the Spolkestra’s music I can almost hear the middle class living rooms in Edinburgh from which it arose;), there does seem to be a serious issue here. Could it be that in the current globalised climate when almost all text is intertextual, that the culturally specific, the localised, the relatively ‘unworldly’ becomes increasingly attractive? The unmediated and authentic (a recurring aesthetic priority throughout the history of art) rather than the intertextual and intercultural?

Could we go so far as to say that ‘folk’ itself contains implications of class? Talking about the specific cultural associations of musical genres is dangerous, especially in the age of globalisation and pluralism; but perhaps that’s the point. So to throw caution to the wind, what might be generalised as specifically middle class music I would say is cross-genre, style-borrowing, ‘art’-influenced pop on one hand and the Western European ‘classical’ tradition on the other. Unlike Tuareg nomads, the British middle classes seem almost perennially unfashionable, as if there is a fundamental inauthenticity to bourgeois culture. To evoke a Marxist perspective, in comparison with the perceived (1) specificity and ‘authenticity’ of the Tinariwen, the self-alienating project of Modernist composers in the 20th century begins to take on the pall of intellectual decadence; preaching to the converted in a bizarre inversion of the left-wing sympathy underlying their abstract aesthetic philosophy.

Consider the relative intellectual decadence of bourgeois culture: the cliché of university students free to flirt with ideas and philosophies when unanchored by the grind of a nine-to-five job; of arthouse cinemas, opera houses and concert halls. Would Susan Sontag, who once declared ‘the self is a project’, have had the same zeal for progression and development had she been working as a kitchen porter? Possibly. I remember, however, decrying my dad for his relatively conservative tastes in music, film and literature. Why was he always reading ‘airport’ crime thrillers? Why was he always listening to the same Van Morrison cod? He replied that he didn’t have time, that returning home from work exhausted, he usually looked to ‘art’ for comfort and distraction rather than Sontag’s self-stretching aesthetic project. Its those of us who remain relatively uncommitted and unpoliticised (who don’t have mouths to feed and taxes to pay) who have the space of mind to watch Funny Games, listen to Trout Mask Replica and read postmodern literary theory.

One could argue that Sontag’s narrative of self-development, of progression, is also a movement away from ‘common sense’, from roots, traditions, from folk. In such a way do what I have cruelly generalised as middle class ‘progressive’ genres of music (which strive to distance themselves from the traditions from which they arose) lose their claim to being ‘folk’?

Sufjan Stevens recently worried that the ‘ever-increasing trend toward excessive innovation has pushed the art and music world into a slapstick exhibition of dog breeding, generating increasingly newer, more contemporary fashions’. He went on to take a dig at Vampire Weekend; ‘ivy league afro pop’, what will they think of next? His comments echo recurring suspicions of Vampire Weekend’s cultural inauthenticity. For some, the band represents a particularly postmodern cultural anachronism; privileged white fashionistas adopting African musical traditions (2). If you wanted to get severe you could talk about Elvis’ musical theft, rerecording and thus making more commercially viable the songs of black artists for a white audience. Is Vampire Weekend a similar example of musical colonialism?

Many would argue for an authenticity-shunning postmodern approach; the postmodern artist as magpie, plundering shiny things from all aspects of global culture in order to redecorate his nest. Perhaps we can find in the Animal Collective’s assertions that ‘its all folk’ the idea that an increasingly globalised, multicultural society calls for similarly intercultural musical genres. The critics of postmodernism would argue however, that ‘cultural agency’ of the type that allows for ‘ivy league afro pop’ comes at a heavy cost. Terry Eagleton might argue that such transgression of cultural boundaries reflects the logic of advanced capitalism. Anything becomes available at minimal cost to those with the resources to travel. Philip Bohlman has described the ‘homogenising effect’ of globalisation, which ‘threatens village practices as it privileges the spaces of the global village.’ In short, does what Eagleton might see as a vapid, ‘anything goes’ pluralism come at the cost of cultural identity.

I would situate myself somewhere in the middle. I find the rigidity and stuffy traditionalism of some ‘straighter’ folk traditions too much to enjoy them in isolation. Many would seem to come associated with very stuffy cultural values such as entrenched nationalism and ‘our country’ conservatism. As a Scot, my favourite ‘folk’ musician was Martyn Bennett, someone who resituated Scottish folk traditions in a medium I could understand and engage with - mixing them with both 1990s/2000s dance culture and other musical traditions from around the world.

The author’s own art-pop orchestra, the Spolkestra

On the other hand there seems to be something fundamentally ‘inauthentic’ to me about the sound of Western Art Music in the current climate. Nicholas Cook has talked about the pomposity of ‘classical music’, how it now seems to embody emotions and ideas that are anachronistic, even perhaps culturally obsolete. All through my five years at music school and three years studying music at university I struggled desperately and failed to like ‘classical’ music. It felt almost like the Enlightened quest for autonomy took the Western art tradition to somewhere it was simply inaccessible to me as a young listener in the 21st century.

And yet somewhere in the middle, both the notions of ‘authenticity’ and ‘progression’’ remain pretty attractive to me. I can neither reject the importance of folk roots, nor the desire to find new approaches and forms through art technique. In short, between the two poles of tradition and innovation, it would seem foolish to fall anywhere but happily in between.

1) It could be argued that the attraction for many in bands like the Tinariwen is this ‘perceived’ authenticity; how relatively rugged, romantic and ‘real’ the music and its context is in comparison to the middle class living rooms in which its heard. But to suggest that the Tinariwen is more ‘culturally authentic’ seems to me to be a vaguely patronising mysticism of the sort that, perhaps indicative more of ‘authenticity’-craving middle class embarrassment.

2) To be fair to Vampire Weekend there is ample self-awareness in their debut to suggest they are themselves very aware of the problematic aspects of their style. As even in the title, Cape Cod Kwasse Kwasse, ‘this feels so unnatural, peter Gabriel too’.

Who gives a folk?, a satellite event of the Battle of Ideas festival, takes place at Vibe Live in London at 7pm on Tuesday 29 July 2008. Speakers include Chris Wood, Barb Jungr, Ivan Hewett, Eddy Lawrence and Neil Davenport.