Folk
Folk is music rooted in the traditional songs of ordinary people, usually sung plainly and played on acoustic instruments.
The word covers two things. Traditional folk music is passed down by ear over generations and belongs to a region or community. Contemporary folk grew from the revival of the mid-twentieth century, when singers took up old songs and wrote new ones in the same spirit, often about politics and everyday life. Acoustic guitar, banjo, fiddle and clear storytelling are common to both.
Artists it is known for: Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan.
- Family
- Folk & Acoustic
- On Spotify
- A current genre
- What it is
- A broad heading
- Also called
- folk music
- Trackify listeners who play it
- 5%
About 4,500 of 83,000 Trackify listeners with public profiles have folk among their top artists of the last four weeks. Rounded; updated 13 November 2026.
Folk artists
Bob Dylan
Gregory Alan Isakov
Mumford & Sons
Simon & Garfunkel
Nick Drake
Caamp
Jim Croce
Leonard Cohen
Joni Mitchell
Fleet Foxes
The folk artists most Trackify listeners have in their top fifty. Each opens on Spotify.
Sources
The definition is written for this site from open sources, and was checked against them on 13 November 2026.