musician
A musician is a person who composes, conducts, or performs music. According to the United States Employment Service, "musician" is a general term used to designate one who follows music as a profession. Musicians include songwriters who wri ...
lyrics
Lyrics are words that make up a song, usually consisting of verses and choruses. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist. The words to an extended musical composition such as an opera are, however, usually known as a "libretto" and their writer, a ...
and
melodies
A melody (from Greek μελῳδία, ''melōidía'', "singing, chanting"), also tune, voice or line, is a linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most literal sense, a melody is a combinati ...
. In the United States, the category is built on the
folk
Folk or Folks may refer to:
Sociology
*Nation
*People
* Folklore
** Folk art
** Folk dance
** Folk hero
** Folk music
*** Folk metal
*** Folk punk
*** Folk rock
** Folk religion
* Folk taxonomy
Arts, entertainment, and media
* Folk Plus or Fo ...
-acoustic tradition, although this role has transmuted through different eras of
popular music
Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training.Popular Music. (2015). ''Fun ...
. Singer-songwriters often provide the sole accompaniment to an entire
composition
Composition or Compositions may refer to:
Arts and literature
*Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography
*Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include v ...
or song, typically using a guitar or piano. In the early 21st century, digital production tools such as GarageBand began to be used by singer-songwriters to compose their music.
Definition and usage
The label "singer-songwriter" (or "song-writer/singer") is used by record labels and critics to define popular-music artists who write and perform their own material, which is often self-accompanied - generally on acoustic guitar or piano.
Such an artist performs the roles of
composer
A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music.
Etymology and Defi ...
,
lyricist
A lyricist is a songwriter who writes lyrics (the spoken words), as opposed to a composer, who writes the song's music which may include but not limited to the melody, harmony, arrangement and accompaniment.
Royalties
A lyricist's incom ...
, vocalist, sometimes instrumentalist, and often self-manager. According to
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...
, singer-songwriters' lyrics are often personal but veiled by elaborate metaphors and vague imagery, and their creative concern is to place emphasis on the song rather than on their performance of it. Most records by such artists have a similarly straightforward and spare sound that places emphasis on the song itself.
The term may also characterise songwriters in the
rock
Rock most often refers to:
* Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids
* Rock music, a genre of popular music
Rock or Rocks may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...
,
folk
Folk or Folks may refer to:
Sociology
*Nation
*People
* Folklore
** Folk art
** Folk dance
** Folk hero
** Folk music
*** Folk metal
*** Folk punk
*** Folk rock
** Folk religion
* Folk taxonomy
Arts, entertainment, and media
* Folk Plus or Fo ...
Aristide Bruant
Aristide Bruant (; 6 May 1851 – 11 February 1925) was a French cabaret singer, comedian, and nightclub owner. He is best known as the man in the red scarf and black cape featured on certain famous posters by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. He ...
Buddy Holly
Charles Hardin Holley (September 7, 1936 – February 3, 1959), known as Buddy Holly, was an American singer and songwriter who was a central and pioneering figure of mid-1950s rock and roll. He was born to a musical family in Lubbock, Texas ...
(1936–1959). The phrase "singer-songwriter", recorded from 1949,
came into popular usage from the 1960s onwards
to describe songwriters who followed particular stylistic and thematic conventions, particularly lyrical introspection, confessional songwriting, mild musical arrangements, and an understated performing style. According to writer Larry David Smith, because it merged the roles of composer, writer, and singer, the popularity of the singer-songwriter phenomenon reintroduced the Medieval
troubadour
A troubadour (, ; oc, trobador ) was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100–1350). Since the word ''troubadour'' is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a ''trobairi ...
tradition of "songs with public personalities" after the
Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley was a collection of music publishers and songwriters in New York City that dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It originally referred to a specific place: West 28th Street ...
era in American popular music. Song topics of singer-songwriters from the American folk music revival include
political protest
A protest (also called a demonstration, remonstration or remonstrance) is a public expression of objection, disapproval or dissent towards an idea or action, typically a political one.
Protests can be thought of as acts of coopera ...
, as in the case of
Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson Guthrie (; July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) was an American singer-songwriter, one of the most significant figures in American folk music. His work focused on themes of American socialism and anti-fascism. He has inspired ...
(1912–1967) and
Pete Seeger
Peter Seeger (May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014) was an American folk singer and social activist. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, Seeger also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of the Weavers, notably ...
(1919–2014). According to the ''Journal of Popular Music Studies'', from the
folk revival
The American folk music revival began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. Its roots went earlier, and performers like Josh White, Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Big Bill Broonzy, Billie Holiday, Richard Dyer-Benn ...
and onward into its permanence in pop music, the role of a singer-songwriter has involved several dimensions of creative identity:
History
The concept of a singer-songwriter can be traced to ancient
bardic
In Celtic cultures, a bard is a professional story teller, verse-maker, music composer, oral historian and genealogist, employed by a patron (such as a monarch or chieftain) to commemorate one or more of the patron's ancestors and to praise t ...
oral tradition, which has existed in various forms throughout the world. Poems would be performed as chant or song, sometimes accompanied by a harp or other similar instrument. After the invention of printing, songs would be written and performed by ballad sellers. Usually these would be versions of existing tunes and lyrics, which were constantly evolving. This developed into the singer-songwriting traditions of folk culture.
Traveling performers existed throughout Europe. Thus, the folklorist
Anatole Le Braz
Anatole le Braz, the "Bard of Brittany" (2 April 1859 – 20 March 1926), was a Breton poet, folklore collector and translator. He was highly regarded amongst both European and American scholars, and known for his warmth and charm.
Biography
Le B ...
gives a detailed account of one ballad singer, Yann Ar Minouz, who wrote and performed songs traveling through Brittany in the late nineteenth century and selling printed versions.
In large towns it was possible to make a living performing in public venues, and with the invention of phonographic recording, early singer-songwriters like
Théodore Botrel
Jean-Baptiste-Théodore-Marie Botrel (14 September 1868 – 28 July 1925) was a French singer-songwriter, poet and playwright. He is best known for his popular songs about his native Brittany, of which the most famous is ''La Paimpolaise''. Durin ...
,
George M. Cohan
George Michael Cohan (July 3, 1878November 5, 1942) was an American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer and theatrical producer.
Cohan began his career as a child, performing with his parents and sister in a vaudev ...
and Hank Williams became celebrities; radio further added to their public recognition and appeal.
During the period from the 1940s through the 1960s, sparked by the American folk music revival, young performers inspired by traditional folk music and groups like the
Almanac Singers
The Almanac Singers was an American New York City-based folk music group, active between 1940 and 1943, founded by Millard Lampell, Lee Hays, Pete Seeger, and Woody Guthrie. The group specialized in topical songs, mostly songs advocating an an ...
and
the Weavers
The Weavers were an American folk music quartet based in the Greenwich Village area of New York City originally consisting of Lee Hays, Pete Seeger, Ronnie Gilbert, and Fred Hellerman. Founded in 1948, the group sang traditional folk songs fro ...
began writing and performing their own original material and creating their own musical arrangements.
In the early 21st century, the digital audio workstation GarageBand has been utilized by many aspiring singer-songwriters to compose and record music. Singer-songwriters who have composed music professionally with GarageBand include
Erykah Badu
Erica Abi Wright (born February 26, 1971), known professionally as Erykah Badu (), is an American singer-songwriter, record producer and actress. Influenced by rhythm and blues, R&B, Soul music, soul, and hip hop, Badu rose to prominence in the ...
Bilal __NOTOC__
Bilal may refer to:
People
* Bilal (name) (a list of people with the name)
* Bilal ibn Rabah, a companion of Muhammad
* Bilal (American singer)
* Bilal (Lebanese singer)
Places
*Bilal Colony, a neighbourhood of Korangi Town in Karachi, ...
The term "singer-songwriter" in North America can be traced back to singers who developed works in the blues and folk music style. Early to mid-20th century American singer-songwriters include Lead Belly,
Jimmie Rodgers
James Charles Rodgers (September 8, 1897 – May 26, 1933) was an American singer-songwriter and musician who rose to popularity in the late 1920s. Widely regarded as "the Father of Country Music", he is best known for his distinctive rhythmi ...
T-Bone Walker
Aaron Thibeaux "T-Bone" Walker (May 28, 1910 – March 16, 1975) was an American blues musician, composer, songwriter and bandleader, who was a pioneer and innovator of the jump blues, West Coast blues, and electric blues sounds. In 2018 ''R ...
,
Blind Willie McTell
Blind Willie McTell (born William Samuel McTier; May 5, 1898 – August 19, 1959) was a Piedmont blues and ragtime singer and guitarist. He played with a fluid, syncopated fingerstyle guitar technique, common among many exponents of Piedmont b ...
,
Lightnin' Hopkins
Samuel John "Lightnin" Hopkins (March 15, 1912 – January 30, 1982) was an American country blues singer, songwriter, guitarist and occasional pianist from Centerville, Texas. In 2010, ''Rolling Stone'' magazine ranked him No. 71 on its list o ...
,
Son House
Edward James "Son" House Jr. (March 21, 1902His date of birth is a matter of some debate. House alleged that he was middle-aged during World War I and that he was 79 in 1965, which would make his date of birth around 1886. However, all legal re ...
, and
Robert Johnson
Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911August 16, 1938) was an American blues musician and songwriter. His landmark recordings in 1936 and 1937 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that has influenced later generati ...
. In the 1940s and 1950s country singer-songwriters like Hank Williams became well known, as well as
Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson Guthrie (; July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) was an American singer-songwriter, one of the most significant figures in American folk music. His work focused on themes of American socialism and anti-fascism. He has inspired ...
, and
Pete Seeger
Peter Seeger (May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014) was an American folk singer and social activist. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, Seeger also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of the Weavers, notably ...
,Spivey, Christine A. ''The Student Historical Journal 1996–1997'', Loyola University New Orleans, 1996. along with
Ronnie Gilbert
Ruth Alice "Ronnie" Gilbert (September 7, 1926 – June 6, 2015), was an American folk singer, songwriter, actress and political activist. She was one of the original members of the music quartet the Weavers, as a contralto with Pete Seeger, Le ...
the Weavers
The Weavers were an American folk music quartet based in the Greenwich Village area of New York City originally consisting of Lee Hays, Pete Seeger, Ronnie Gilbert, and Fred Hellerman. Founded in 1948, the group sang traditional folk songs fro ...
who performed their mostly topical works to an ever-growing wider audience. These proto-singer-songwriters were less concerned than today's singer-songwriters with the unadulterated originality of their music and lyrics, and would lift parts from other songs and play covers without hesitation. The tradition of writing topical songs (songs regarding specific issues of the day, such as Lead Belly's "Jim Crow Blues" or Guthrie's "
Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)
"Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)" is a protest song with lyrics by Woody Guthrie and music by Martin Hoffman detailing the January 28, 1948 crash of a plane near Los Gatos Canyon, west of Coalinga in Fresno County, California, United Stat ...
") was established by this group of musicians. Singers like Seeger and Guthrie would attend rallies for labor unions, and so wrote many songs concerning the life of the working classes, and social protest; as did other folksingers like
Josh White
Joshua Daniel White (February 11, 1914 – September 5, 1969) was an American singer, guitarist, songwriter, actor and civil rights activist. He also recorded under the names Pinewood Tom and Tippy Barton in the 1930s.
White grew up in the Sout ...
,
Cisco Houston
Gilbert Vandine "Cisco" Houston (August 18, 1918 – April 29, 1961) was an American folk singer and songwriter, who is closely associated with Woody Guthrie due to their extensive history of recording together.
Houston was a regular recording ...
Earl Robinson
Earl Hawley Robinson (July 2, 1910 – July 20, 1991) was a composer, arranger and folk music singer-songwriter from Seattle, Washington. Robinson is remembered for his music, including the cantata "Ballad for Americans" and songs such as " J ...
,
Ewan MacColl
James Henry Miller (25 January 1915 – 22 October 1989), better known by his stage name Ewan MacColl, was a folk singer-songwriter, folk song collector, labour activist and actor. Born in England to Scottish parents, he is known as one of the ...
,
John Jacob Niles
John Jacob Niles (April 28, 1892 – March 1, 1980) was an American composer, singer and collector of traditional ballads. Called the "Dean of American Balladeers," Niles was an important influence on the American folk music revival of the 195 ...
, and
Doc Watson
Arthel Lane "Doc" Watson (March 3, 1923 – May 29, 2012) was an American guitarist, songwriter, and singer of bluegrass, folk, country, blues, and gospel music. Watson won seven Grammy awards as well as a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. W ...
, while blues singers like Johnson and Hopkins wrote songs about their personal life experiences. This focus on social issues has greatly influenced the singer-songwriter genre. Additionally in the 1930s through the 1950s several jazz and blues singer-songwriters emerged like
Hoagy Carmichael
Hoagland Howard Carmichael (November 22, 1899 – December 27, 1981) was an American musician, composer, songwriter, actor and lawyer. Carmichael was one of the most successful Tin Pan Alley songwriters of the 1930s, and was among the first ...
,
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner, Lester Young, Holiday had an innovative influence on jazz music and pop s ...
,
Ray Charles
Ray Charles Robinson Sr. (September 23, 1930 – June 10, 2004) was an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. He is regarded as one of the most iconic and influential singers in history, and was often referred to by contemporaries as "The Ge ...
,
Harry Gibson
Harry "The Hipster" Gibson (June 27, 1915 – May 3, 1991), born Harry Raab, was an American jazz pianist, singer, and songwriter. He played New York style stride piano and boogie woogie while singing in a wild, unrestrained style. His music car ...
Nina Simone
Eunice Kathleen Waymon (February 21, 1933 – April 21, 2003), known professionally as Nina Simone (), was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, and civil rights activist. Her music spanned styles including classical, folk, gospel, blues, ...
, as well as in the rock n' roll genre from which emerged influential singer-songwriters
Jerry Lee Lewis
Jerry Lee Lewis (September 29, 1935October 28, 2022) was an American singer, songwriter and pianist. Nicknamed "The Killer", he was described as "rock & roll's first great wild man". A pioneer of rock and roll and rockabilly music, Lewis made ...
,
Buddy Holly
Charles Hardin Holley (September 7, 1936 – February 3, 1959), known as Buddy Holly, was an American singer and songwriter who was a central and pioneering figure of mid-1950s rock and roll. He was born to a musical family in Lubbock, Texas ...
,
Chuck Berry
Charles Edward Anderson Berry (October 18, 1926 – March 18, 2017) was an American singer, songwriter and guitarist who pioneered rock and roll. Nicknamed the " Father of Rock and Roll", he refined and developed rhythm and blues into th ...
Ritchie Valens
Richard Steven Valenzuela (May 13, 1941 – February 3, 1959), known professionally as Ritchie Valens, was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter. A rock and roll pioneer and a forefather of the Chicano rock movement, Valens was killed i ...
, and
Paul Anka
Paul Albert Anka (born July 30, 1941) is a Canadian-American singer, songwriter and actor. He is best known for his signature hit songs including " Diana", " Lonely Boy", " Put Your Head on My Shoulder", and "(You're) Having My Baby". Anka also ...
. In the
country music
Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, ...
Patsy Cline
Patsy is a given name often used as a diminutive of the feminine given name Patricia or sometimes the masculine name Patrick, or occasionally other names containing the syllable "Pat" (such as Cleopatra, Patience, Patrice, or Patricia). Among I ...
,
Tammy Wynette
Tammy Wynette (born Virginia Wynette Pugh; May 5, 1942 – April 6, 1998) was an American country music artist, as well as an actress and author. She is considered among the genre's most influential and successful artists. Along with Loretta Ly ...
,
Loretta Lynn
Loretta Lynn (; April 14, 1932 – October 4, 2022) was an American country music singer and songwriter. In a career spanning six decades, Lynn released multiple gold albums. She had numerous hits such as "You Ain't Woman Enough (To Take My Ma ...
,
George Jones
George Glenn Jones (September 12, 1931 – April 26, 2013) was an American country musician, singer, and songwriter. He achieved international fame for his long list of hit records, including his best-known song " He Stopped Loving Her Today", ...
,
Merle Haggard
Merle Ronald Haggard (April 6, 1937 – April 6, 2016) was an American country music singer, songwriter, guitarist, and fiddler.
Haggard was born in Oildale, California, toward the end of the Great Depression. His childhood was troubled a ...
Billy Edd Wheeler
Billy Edward "Edd" Wheeler (born December 9, 1932, Boone County, West Virginia, United States) is an American songwriter, performer, writer, and visual artist.
His songs include " Jackson" (Grammy award winner for Johnny Cash and June Carter ...
, and others emerged from the 1940s through the 1960s, often writing compelling songs about love relationships and other subjects.
The first popular recognition of the singer-songwriter in English-speaking North America and the United Kingdom occurred in the 1960s and early 1970s when a series of blues, folk and
country
A country is a distinct part of the world, such as a state, nation, or other political entity. It may be a sovereign state or make up one part of a larger state. For example, the country of Japan is an independent, sovereign state, while the ...
-influenced musicians rose to prominence and popularity. These singer-songwriters included
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...
,
Neil Young
Neil Percival Young (born November 12, 1945) is a Canadian-American singer and songwriter. After embarking on a music career in Winnipeg in the 1960s, Young moved to Los Angeles, joining Buffalo Springfield with Stephen Stills, Richie Furay ...
,
John Lennon
John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; 9 October 19408 December 1980) was an English singer, songwriter, musician and peace activist who achieved worldwide fame as founder, co-songwriter, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of ...
,
Van Morrison
Sir George Ivan Morrison (born 31 August 1945), known professionally as Van Morrison, is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist whose recording career spans seven decades. He has won two Grammy Awards.
As a teenager in t ...
,
Willie Nelson
Willie Hugh Nelson (born April 29, 1933) is an American country musician. The critical success of the album ''Shotgun Willie'' (1973), combined with the critical and commercial success of ''Red Headed Stranger'' (1975) and '' Stardust'' (197 ...
,
Paul Simon
Paul Frederic Simon (born October 13, 1941) is an American musician, singer, songwriter and actor whose career has spanned six decades. He is one of the most acclaimed songwriters in popular music, both as a solo artist and as half of folk roc ...
,
Leonard Cohen
Leonard Norman Cohen (September 21, 1934November 7, 2016) was a Canadian singer-songwriter, poet and novelist. His work explored religion, politics, isolation, depression, sexuality, loss, death, and romantic relationships. He was inducted in ...
Townes Van Zandt
John Townes Van Zandt (March 7, 1944 – January 1, 1997) was an American singer-songwriter.
, and
Neil Diamond
Neil Leslie Diamond (born January 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. He has sold more than 130 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling musicians of all time. He has had ten No. 1 singles on the Hot 100 and Adul ...
, also began releasing work as performers. In contrast to the storytelling approach of most prior country and folk music, these performers typically wrote songs from a highly personal (often first-person), introspective point of view. The adjectives "confessional" and "sensitive" were often used (sometimes derisively) to describe singer-songwriter style.
In the rock band era, members were not technically singer-songwriters as solo acts. However, many were singer-songwriters who created songs with other band members. Examples include
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter and musician who gained worldwide fame with the Beatles, for whom he played bass guitar and shared primary songwriting and lead vocal duties with John Lennon. One ...
,
John Lennon
John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; 9 October 19408 December 1980) was an English singer, songwriter, musician and peace activist who achieved worldwide fame as founder, co-songwriter, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of ...
Ringo Starr
Sir Richard Starkey (born 7 July 1940), known professionally as Ringo Starr, is an English musician, singer, songwriter and actor who achieved international fame as the drummer for the Beatles. Starr occasionally sang lead vocals with the ...
Mick Jagger
Sir Michael Philip Jagger (born 26 July 1943) is an English singer and songwriter who has achieved international fame as the lead vocalist and one of the founder members of the rock band the Rolling Stones. His ongoing songwriting partnershi ...
,
Keith Richards
Keith Richards (born 18 December 1943), often referred to during the 1960s and 1970s as "Keith Richard", is an English musician and songwriter who has achieved international fame as the co-founder, guitarist, secondary vocalist, and co-princi ...
,
Jerry Garcia
Jerome John Garcia (August 1, 1942 – August 9, 1995) was an American musician best known for being the principal songwriter, lead guitarist, and a vocalist with the rock band Grateful Dead, which he co-founded and which came to prominence ...
and
Bob Weir
Robert Hall Weir ( ; né Parber, born October 16, 1947) is an American musician and songwriter best known as a founding member of the Grateful Dead. After the group disbanded in 1995, Weir performed with The Other Ones, later known as The Dead ...
,
Elton John
Sir Elton Hercules John (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight; 25 March 1947) is a British singer, pianist and composer. Commonly nicknamed the "Rocket Man" after his 1972 hit single of the same name, John has led a commercially successful career a ...
Justin Hayward
David Justin Hayward (born 14 October 1946) is an English musician best known as the lead singer, songwriter and guitarist of the rock band the Moody Blues. Hayward became the group's principal lead guitarist and vocalist over the 1967–1974 ...
Phil Collins
Philip David Charles Collins (born 30 January 1951) is an English singer, musician, songwriter, record producer and actor. He was the drummer and lead singer of the rock band Genesis and also has a career as a solo performer. Between 1982 and ...
Glenn Frey
Glenn Lewis Frey (; November 6, 1948 – January 18, 2016) was an American singer, guitarist and a founding member of the rock band Eagles. Frey was the co-lead singer and frontman for the Eagles, roles he came to share with fellow member Don H ...
Barry Melton
Barry "The Fish" Melton (born June 14, 1947) is the co-founder and original lead guitarist of Country Joe and the Fish and Dinosaurs. He appears on all the Country Joe and the Fish recordings and he also wrote some of the songs that the band re ...
. Many others like
Eric Clapton
Eric Patrick Clapton (born 1945) is an English rock and blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He is often regarded as one of the most successful and influential guitarists in rock music. Clapton ranked second in ''Rolling Stone''s list of ...
found success as singer-songwriters in their later careers.
The scene that had developed out of the American folk music revival, pioneered by
Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson Guthrie (; July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) was an American singer-songwriter, one of the most significant figures in American folk music. His work focused on themes of American socialism and anti-fascism. He has inspired ...
and
Pete Seeger
Peter Seeger (May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014) was an American folk singer and social activist. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, Seeger also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of the Weavers, notably ...
had grown to a major movement in the early 1960s, popularized by
Joan Baez
Joan Chandos Baez (; born January 9, 1941) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist. Her contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest and social justice. Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing more ...
and her protégée,
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...
, who had started reaching a mainstream audience with his hit,
Blowin' in the Wind
"Blowin' in the Wind" is a song written by Bob Dylan in 1962.
It was released as a single and included on his album '' The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan'' in 1963. It has been described as a protest song and poses a series of rhetorical questions abou ...
" (1963) bringing "
protest song
A protest song is a song that is associated with a movement for social change and hence part of the broader category of ''topical'' songs (or songs connected to current events). It may be folk, classical, or commercial in genre.
Among social mov ...
s" to a wider audience. There were hints of cross-pollination, but rock and folk music had remained largely separate genres, often with different audiences. An early attempt at fusing elements of folk and rock was highlighted in the Animals "
House of the Rising Sun
A house is a single-unit residential building. It may range in complexity from a rudimentary hut to a complex structure of wood, masonry, concrete or other material, outfitted with plumbing, electrical, and heating, ventilation, and air condi ...
" (1964), a folk song, recorded with rock and roll instrumentation.
By the mid-1960s
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...
took the lead in merging folk and rock, and in July 1965, released "
Like a Rolling Stone
"Like a Rolling Stone" is a song by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on July 20, 1965, by Columbia Records. Its confrontational lyrics originated in an extended piece of verse Dylan wrote in June 1965, when he returned exhausted fro ...
", with a revolutionary rock sound, steeped in tawdry urban imagery, followed by an electric performance later that month at the Newport Folk Festival. Dylan plugged an entire generation into the milieu of the singer-songwriter. Often writing from an urban point of view, with poetry punctuated by rock rhythms and electric power, Dylan's fusing of folk and rock freed up emerging singer-songwriters to use elements of both traditions to tell their stories. In the mid- to late 1960s, bands and singer-songwriters began to proliferate the underground New York art/music scene. The release of ''
The Velvet Underground & Nico
''The Velvet Underground & Nico'' is the debut album by the American rock band the Velvet Underground and German singer Nico, released in March 1967 through Verve Records. It was recorded in 1966 while the band were featured on Andy Warhol's Ex ...
'' in 1967, featuring singer-songwriter
Lou Reed
Lewis Allan Reed (March 2, 1942October 27, 2013) was an American musician, songwriter, and poet. He was the guitarist, singer, and principal songwriter for the rock band the Velvet Underground and had a solo career that spanned five decades. ...
and German singer and collaborator
Nico
Naftiran Intertrade Company limited (NICO) is a Swiss-based subsidiary of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC). NICO is a general contractor for the oil and gas industry. NIOC buys the vast majority of Iran's gasoline imports. NICO is a key pl ...
was described as the "most prophetic rock album ever made" by ''
Rolling Stone
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first kno ...
'' in 2003.
In the late '60s a new wave of female singer-songwriters broke from the confines of pop, using the urban landscape as their canvas for lyrics in the confessional style of poets like
Anne Sexton
Anne Sexton (born Anne Gray Harvey; November 9, 1928 – October 4, 1974) was an American poet known for her highly personal, confessional verse. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for her book '' Live or Die''. Her poetry details ...
and
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath (; October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for two of her published collections, ''The ...
. These pioneering women, appeared in a feature in ''
Newsweek
''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis (businessman), Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print m ...
'', July 1969, "The Girls: Letting Go: 'What is common to them – to Joni Mitchell and
Lotti Golden
Lotti Golden (born November 27, 1949) is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, poet and artist. Golden is best known for her 1969 debut album '' Motor-Cycle'', on Atlantic Records.
Winner of the ASCAP Pop Award for songwriting and RI ...
, to
Laura Nyro
Laura Nyro ( ; born Laura Nigro; October 18, 1947 – April 8, 1997) was an American songwriter, singer, and pianist. She achieved critical acclaim with her own recordings, particularly the albums ''Eli and the Thirteenth Confession'' (1968 ...
,
Melanie
Melanie is a feminine given name derived from the Greek μελανία (melania), "blackness" and that from μέλας (melas), meaning "dark".Elyse Weinberg
Elyse J. Weinberg (October 25, 1945 – February 20, 2020) was a Canadian-American singer-songwriter. In later life she used the name Cori Bishop.
Biography
Weinberg was born in Chatham, Ontario, Canada. She and her family moved to Montreal w ...
, are the personalised songs they write, like voyages of self-discovery, brimming with keen observation and startling in the impact of their poetry." In ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'', author
Laura Barton
Laura Barton (born 1977) is an English journalist and writer. She writes mainly for ''The Guardian'', and wrote a novel, ''Twenty-One Locks'', published in 2010.
Biography
Barton was born in and grew up in the village of Newburgh in Lancash ...
describes the radical shift in subject matter—they sang about politics, love affairs, the urban landscape, drugs, disappointment, and the life and loneliness of the itinerant performer.
Lotti Golden
Lotti Golden (born November 27, 1949) is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, poet and artist. Golden is best known for her 1969 debut album '' Motor-Cycle'', on Atlantic Records.
Winner of the ASCAP Pop Award for songwriting and RI ...
, in her Atlantic debut album ''
Motor-Cycle
A motorcycle (motorbike, bike, or trike (if three-wheeled)) is a two or three-wheeled motor vehicle steered by a handlebar. Motorcycle design varies greatly to suit a range of different purposes: long-distance travel, commuting, cruising ...
'', chronicled her life in NYC's East Village in the late 1960s counterculture, visiting subjects such as gender identity (The Space Queens-Silky is Sad) and excessive drug use (Gonna Fay's). The women in the 1969 Newsweek article ushered in a new age of the contemporary female singer-songwriter that has informed generations of women singer-songwriters into the 21st century, with poet
Warsan Shire
Warsan Shire (born 1 August 1988) is a British writer, poet, editor and teacher, who was born to Somali parents in Kenya. In 2013 she was awarded the inaugural Brunel University African Poetry Prize, chosen from a shortlist of six candidates o ...
as the muse for
Beyoncé
Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter ( ; born September 4, 1981) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Beyoncé's boundary-pushing artistry and vocals have made her the most influential female musician of the 21st century, according to ...
's 2016 album ''Lemonade''.
By the mid-1970s and early 1980s, the original wave of singer-songwriters had largely been absorbed into a more general pop or
soft rock
Soft rock is a form of rock music that originated in the late 1960s in Southern California and the United Kingdom which smoothed over the edges of singer-songwriter and pop rock, relying on simple, melodic songs with big, lush productions. S ...
format, but some new artists in the singer-songwriter tradition (including
Billy Joel
William Martin Joel (born May 9, 1949) is an American singer, pianist and songwriter. Commonly nicknamed the "Piano Man (song), Piano Man" after his album and signature song of the same name, he has led a commercially successful career as a solo ...
,
Stevie Wonder
Stevland Hardaway Morris ( Judkins; May 13, 1950), known professionally as Stevie Wonder, is an American singer-songwriter, who is credited as a pioneer and influence by musicians across a range of genres that include rhythm and blues, Pop musi ...
,
Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949) is an American singer and songwriter. He has released 21 studio albums, most of which feature his backing band, the E Street Band. Originally from the Jersey Shore, he is an originat ...
,
Tom Petty
Thomas Earl Petty (October 20, 1950October 2, 2017) was an American musician who was the lead vocalist and guitarist of the rock band Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, formed in 1976. He previously led the band Mudcrutch, was a member of the la ...
,
Jackson Browne
Clyde Jackson Browne (born October 9, 1948) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and political activist who has sold over 18 million albums in the United States.
Emerging as a precocious teenage songwriter in mid-1960s Los Angeles, he h ...
,
Chris Isaak
Christopher Joseph Isaak (born June 26, 1956) is an American singer, songwriter, guitarist and occasional actor. He is widely known for his breakthrough hit and signature song "Wicked Game", as well as other songs such as "Blue Hotel", "Baby D ...
,
Victoria Williams
Victoria Williams (born December 23, 1958) is an American singer, songwriter and musician, originally from Shreveport, Louisiana, United States, although she has resided in Southern California throughout her musical career. Diagnosed with multi ...
,
John Mellencamp
John J. Mellencamp (born October 7, 1951), previously known as Johnny Cougar, John Cougar, and John Cougar Mellencamp, is an American singer-songwriter. He is known for his catchy brand of heartland rock, which emphasizes traditional instrument ...
and
Warren Zevon
Warren William Zevon (; January 24, 1947 – September 7, 2003) was an American rock singer, songwriter, and musician.
Zevon's most famous compositions include "Werewolves of London", " Lawyers, Guns and Money", and " Roland the Headless Th ...
) continued to emerge, and in other cases rock and even punk rock artists such as
Peter Case
Peter Case (born April 5, 1954) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. His career is wide-ranging, from rock n' roll and blues, to folk rock and solo acoustic performance.
Biography
Early career
Case was born in Buffalo, New York, B ...
Paul Westerberg
Paul Harold Westerberg (born December 31, 1959) is an American musician, best known as the lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter for the Replacements. Following the breakup of the Replacements, Westerberg launched a solo career that saw him re ...
transitioned to careers as solo singer-songwriters.
Kate Bush
Catherine Bush (born 30 July 1958) is an English singer, songwriter, record producer and dancer. In 1978, at the age of 19, she topped the UK Singles Chart for four weeks with her debut single " Wuthering Heights", becoming the first female ...
remained distinctive throughout with her idiosyncratic style.
In the late 1980s, the term was applied to a group of predominantly female U.S. artists, beginning with Suzanne Vega whose first album sold unexpectedly well, followed by the likes of
Tracy Chapman
Tracy Chapman (born March 30, 1964) is an American singer-songwriter. Chapman is best known for her hit singles "Fast Car" and "Give Me One Reason".
Chapman was signed to Elektra Records by Bob Krasnow in 1987. The following year she released ...
,
Melissa Etheridge
Melissa Lou Etheridge (born May 29, 1961) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and guitarist. Her eponymous debut album was released in 1988 and became an underground success. It peaked at No. 22 on the ''Billboard'' 200 and its lead ...
,
Nanci Griffith
Nanci Caroline Griffith (July 6, 1953 – August 13, 2021) was an American singer, guitarist, and songwriter. She appeared many times on the PBS music program ''Austin City Limits'' starting in 1985 (season 10). In 1994 she won a Grammy Award f ...
,
k.d. lang
Kathryn Dawn Lang (born November 2, 1961), known by her stage name k.d. lang, is a Canadian pop and country singer-songwriter and occasional actress. Lang has won Juno Awards and Grammy Awards for her musical performances. Hits include the s ...
,
Shania Twain
Eilleen Regina "Shania" Twain ( , ; née Edwards; born August 28, 1965) is a Canadian singer and songwriter. She has sold over 100 million records, making her the best-selling female artist in country music history and one of the best-s ...
,
Sarah McLachlan
Sarah Ann McLachlan Order of Canada, OC Order of British Columbia, OBC (born January 28, 1968) is a Canadian singer-songwriter. As of 2015, she had sold over 40 million albums worldwide. McLachlan's best-selling album to date is ''Surfacing ( ...
,
Shawn Colvin
Shawn Colvin (born Shawna Lee Colvin, January 10, 1956) is an American singer-songwriter and musician. While Colvin has been a solo recording artist for decades, she is best known for her 1998 Grammy Award-winning song " Sunny Came Home".
Early ...
,
Sheryl Crow
Sheryl Suzanne Crow (born February 11, 1962) is an American musician, singer, songwriter and actress. Her music incorporates elements of rock, pop, country, folk, and blues. She has released eleven studio albums, five compilations and three li ...
,
Lisa Loeb
Lisa Loeb (; born March 11, 1968) is an American singer-songwriter, musician, author and actress. She started her career with the number 1 hit song "Stay (I Missed You)" from the film '' Reality Bites,'' the first number 1 single for an artist ...
,
Joan Osborne
Joan Elizabeth Osborne (born July 8, 1962) is an American singer, songwriter, and interpreter of music, having recorded and performed in various popular American musical genres including rock, pop, soul, R&B, blues, and country. She is best kn ...
,
Indigo Girls
Indigo Girls are an American folk rock music duo from Atlanta, Georgia, United States, consisting of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers. The two met in elementary school and began performing together as high school students in Decatur, Georgia, part o ...
, and
Tori Amos
Tori Amos (born Myra Ellen Amos; August 22, 1963) is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. She is a classically trained musician with a mezzo-soprano vocal range. Having already begun composing instrumental pieces on piano, Amos won a full ...
, who found success first in the United Kingdom, then in her home market. In the early 1990s, female artists also began to emerge in new styles, including
Courtney Love
Courtney Michelle Love (née Harrison; born July 9, 1964) is an American singer, guitarist, songwriter, and actress. A figure in the alternative and grunge scenes of the 1990s, her career has spanned four decades. She rose to prominence as ...
and PJ Harvey. Later in the mid-1990s, the term was revived again with the success of Canada's Alanis Morissette and her breakthrough album ''
Jagged Little Pill
''Jagged Little Pill'' is the third studio album by Canadian singer Alanis Morissette, released on June 13, 1995, through Maverick. It was her first album to be released worldwide. It marked a stylistic departure from the dance-pop sound of he ...
.''
Also in the 1980s and 1990s, artists such as
Bono
Paul David Hewson (born 10 May 1960), known by his stage name Bono (), is an Irish singer-songwriter, activist, and philanthropist. He is the lead vocalist and primary lyricist of the rock band U2.
Born and raised in Dublin, he attended M ...
,
the Edge
David Howell Evans (born 8 August 1961), better known as the Edge or simply Edge,McCormick (2006), pp. 21, 23–24 is an English-born Irish musician, singer, and songwriter. He is best known as the lead guitarist, keyboardist, and backing voca ...
Jeff Buckley
Jeffrey Scott Buckley (November 17, 1966 – May 29, 1997), raised as Scott Moorhead, was an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. After a decade as a session guitarist in Los Angeles, Buckley amassed a following in the early 1990s by ...
,
Richard Barone
Richard Barone is an American rock musician who first gained attention as frontman for the Bongos. He works as a songwriter, arranger, author, director, and record producer, releases albums as a solo artist, tours, and has created concert event ...
,
Duncan Sheik
Duncan Sheik (born November 18, 1969) is an American singer-songwriter and composer. Sheik is known for his 1996 debut single " Barely Breathing", which earned him a Grammy Award nomination for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. He has composed m ...
and Elliott Smith borrowed from the singer-songwriter tradition to create new acoustic-based rock styles. In the 2000s, a quieter style emerged, with largely impressionistic lyrics, from artists such as
Norah Jones
Norah Jones (born Geethali Norah Jones Shankar; March 30, 1979) is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. She has won several awards for her music and as of 2012, has sold more than 50 million records worldwide. ''Billboard'' named her the ...
,
Conor Oberst
Conor Mullen Oberst (born February 15, 1980) is an American singer-songwriter best known for his work in Bright Eyes. He has also played in several other bands, including Desaparecidos, the Faint (previously named Norman Bailer), Commander V ...
David Bazan
David Bazan (; born January 22, 1976) is an American indie rock singer-songwriter from Phoenix, Arizona who now resides in Seattle, Washington. Bazan is the lead singer and creative force behind the band Pedro the Lion and was the lead singer ...
Iron & Wine
Samuel "Sam" Ervin Beam (born July 26, 1974), better known by his stage name Iron & Wine, is an American singer-songwriter. He has released six studio albums, several EPs and singles, as well as a few download-only releases, which include a ...
Ray LaMontagne
Raymond Charles Jack LaMontagne (; born June 18, 1973) is an American singer-songwriter and musician. LaMontagne has released eight studio albums: ''Trouble'', ''Till the Sun Turns Black'', '' Gossip in the Grain'', '' God Willin' & the Creek Don ...
,
Meg Hutchinson
Meg Hutchinson (born 1978, in South Egremont, Massachusetts) is an American folk singer-songwriter. Originally from rural westernmost Massachusetts, Hutchinson is now based in the Boston area. Influences include poet Mary Oliver, songwriter Sha ...
,
Darden Smith
Darden Smith (born March 11, 1962, in Brenham, Texas) is an Austin-based singer-songwriter known for his lyrics and for weaving folk and Americana influences with rock, pop, and the musical roots of his home state.Keith Kachtick, "Quick Ch ...
,
Josh Rouse
Josh Rouse (born March 9, 1972) is an American folk/roots pop singer-songwriter. Originally from Nebraska, Rouse began his recording career in Nashville in 1998 and later relocated to Spain. In 2014, Rouse won a Spanish Goya Film Award in the ...
, Steve Millar,
Jolie Holland
Jolie Holland is an American singer and performer who combines elements of folk, traditional, country, rock, jazz, and blues.
Career
Growing up in Houston, Texas, Jolie left in 1994, moving to Austin, New Orleans, and San Francisco before ...
Jack Savoretti
Giovanni Edgar Charles Galletto-Savoretti (born 10 October 1983), known professionally as Jack Savoretti, is an English acoustic singer, songwriter, and musician. He has released seven studio albums to date: ''Between the Minds'' (2007), ''Harde ...
,
Richard Shindell
Richard Shindell (born August 3, 1960) is an American folk singer, songwriter, producer, and musician. Shindell grew up in Port Washington, New York, and now lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with his wife, Lila Caimari, a university profess ...
,
John Gorka
John Gorka (born July 27, 1958) is an American singer-songwriter. In 1991, ''Rolling Stone'' magazine called him "the preeminent male singer-songwriter of what has been dubbed the New Folk Movement."
Personal life
Gorka was raised in the Colon ...
Noel Gallagher
Noel Thomas David Gallagher (born 29 May 1967) is an English singer, songwriter, and musician. He was the chief songwriter, lead guitarist, and co-lead vocalist of the rock band Oasis until their split in 2009. After leaving Oasis, he formed ...
,
T Bone Burnett
Joseph Henry "T Bone" Burnett III (born January 14, 1948) is an American record producer, guitarist and songwriter. He rose to fame as a guitarist in Bob Dylan's band during the 1970s. He has received multiple Grammy awards for his work in fil ...
,
Eddie Vedder
Eddie Jerome Vedder (born Edward Louis Severson III; December 23, 1964) is an American singer, musician, and songwriter best known as the lead vocalist and one of four guitarists of the rock band Pearl Jam. He also appeared as a guest vocalist i ...
, and
Pete Yorn
Peter Joseph Yorn (born July 27, 1974) is an American singer, songwriter, and musician. He first gained international recognition after his debut record, '' Musicforthemorningafter'', was released to critical and commercial acclaim in 2001. He is ...
. Others used
drugs
A drug is any chemical substance that causes a change in an organism's physiology or psychology when consumed. Drugs are typically distinguished from food and substances that provide nutritional support. Consumption of drugs can be via inhalat ...
as a mind-altering way to boost creativity; for example, Emil Amos of
Holy Sons
Holy Sons is a one-man solo band built around American songwriter and drummer Emil Amos. Amos is notable for releasing "genre-bending" albums, according to ''LA Weekly'' music reviewer Chris Martins, and for being a prolific songwriter; one accou ...
took drugs daily from age sixteen on, wrote over 1,000 songs, and landed a record contract with an
indie label
An independent record label (or indie label) is a record label that operates without the funding or distribution of major record labels; they are a type of small- to medium-sized enterprise, or SME. The labels and artists are often represented ...
.
Recording on the professional-grade systems became affordable for individuals in the late 1990s. This created opportunities for people to independently record and sell their music. Such artists are known as "indies" because they release their records on independent, often self-owned record labels, or no label at all. Additionally the Internet has provided a means for indies to get their music heard by a wider audience.
Chanson, the French tradition
French "
chanson
A (, , french: chanson française, link=no, ; ) is generally any lyric-driven French song, though it most often refers to the secular polyphonic French songs of late medieval and Renaissance music. The genre had origins in the monophonic s ...
" comes from an old tradition, since the
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...
. It is driven by the rhythms of the French language and has a generally higher standard of lyrics than in the English-speaking world. It can be distinguished from the rest of French "pop" music or
soft rock
Soft rock is a form of rock music that originated in the late 1960s in Southern California and the United Kingdom which smoothed over the edges of singer-songwriter and pop rock, relying on simple, melodic songs with big, lush productions. S ...
format that began to spread in France during the 1960s until today, under the cultural influence of Anglo-American rock music and the rock band era.
The first modern French singer-songwriter was
Charles Trenet
Louis Charles Augustin Georges Trenet (; 18 May 1913 – 19 February 2001) was a renowned French singer-songwriter who composed both the music and the lyrics to nearly a thousand songs over a career that lasted more than 60 years. These include ...
, who began his solo career in 1938. He was the first to use jazz rhythms in chanson. He would remain an isolated act until the creative blooming of a new generation during the post-World War II era (mid-1940s and 1950s), where such artists as Léo Ferré,
Georges Brassens
Georges Charles Brassens (; 22 October 1921 – 29 October 1981) was a French singer-songwriter and poet.
As an iconic figure in France, he achieved fame through his elegant songs with their harmonically complex music for voice and guitar and a ...
,
Félix Leclerc
Félix Leclerc, (August 2, 1914 – August 8, 1988) was a French-Canadian singer-songwriter, poet, writer, actor and '' Québécois'' political activist. He was made an Officer of the Order of Canada on December 20, 1968. Leclerc was posth ...
(from
Quebec
Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...
Henri Salvador
Henri Salvador (18 July 1917 – 13 February 2008) was a French Caribbean comedian, singer and cabaret artist.
Biography
Salvador was born in Cayenne, French Guiana. His father, Clovis, and his mother, Antonine Paterne, daughter of a native C ...
(from French Guiana),
Charles Aznavour
Charles Aznavour ( , ; born Shahnour Vaghinag Aznavourian, hy, Շահնուր Վաղինակ Ազնավուրեան, ; 22 May 1924 – 1 October 2018) was a French-Armenian singer, lyricist, actor and diplomat. Aznavour was known for his dist ...
, and Barbara appeared, with contrasted and rich imagination. Most of them are recognized as great masters by younger generations of French artists, especially Ferré (for the richness of his lyrics, his melodic genius, his critical density on social issues and his body of work's profoundness) and Gainsbourg (for the bright and tasteful adaptation of pop or rock music with French language-driven rhythms).
During the 1960s and 1970s, the most prominent singer-songwriters included
Claude Nougaro
Claude Nougaro (, oc, Claudi Nogaròu; 9 September 1929 – 4 March 2004) was a French songwriter and singer.
Life and career
Claude Nougaro was born in Toulouse to a respected French opera singer, Pierre Nougaro, and a piano teacher, Liette ...
,
Jean Ferrat
Jean Ferrat (born Jean Tenenbaum; 26 December 1930 – 13 March 2010) was a French singer-songwriter and poet. He specialized in singing poetry, particularly that of Louis Aragon. He had a left-wing sympathy that found its way into a few songs.
...
,
Boby Lapointe
Robert Jean-François Joseph Pascal Lapointe (; 16 April 1922 – 29 June 1972), better known by his stage name Boby Lapointe (), was a French actor and singer, noted for his humorous texts, alliterationsSee the titles: ''Aubade à Lydie en do'', ...
,
Françoise Hardy
Françoise Madeleine Hardy (; born 17 January 1944) is a French former singer and songwriter. Mainly known for singing melancholic sentimental ballads, Hardy has been an important figure in French pop music since her debut, spanning a career o ...
,
Michel Polnareff
Michel Polnareff (born 3 July 1944, Nérac, Lot-et-Garonne, France) is a French singer-songwriter, who was popular in France from the mid-1960s until the early 1990s with his penultimate original album, ''Kāma-Sūtra''. He is still criticall ...
,
Nino Ferrer
Nino Agostino Arturo Maria Ferrari (), known as Nino Ferrer (15 August 1934 – 13 August 1998), was an Italian-born French singer-songwriter and author.
Biography and career
Nino Ferrer was born on 15 August 1934 in Genoa, Italy, but lived the ...
Bernard Lavilliers
Bernard Oulion (; born 7 October 1946 in Saint-Étienne), known professionally as Bernard Lavilliers (), is a French singer-songwriter and actor.
Discography Albums
Studio albums
* ''Premiers pas...'' (1968)
* ''Les poètes'' (1972)
* ''Le St ...
,
Véronique Sanson
Véronique Marie Line Sanson (; born 24 April 1949) is a three-time Victoires de la Musique award-winning French singer-songwriter and record producer with an avid following in her native country.
Ten years after Barbara, Véronique Sanson beca ...
and
Jacques Higelin
Jacques Joseph Victor Higelin (; 18 October 1940 – 6 April 2018) was a French pop singer who rose to prominence in the early 1970s.
Early life
Higelin was born on 18 October 1940. His father, Paul, a railway worker and musician of Alsatian de ...
, amongst others.
Cantautori, the Italian tradition
''Cantautori'' (Italian plural; the singular is ''cantautore'') is the Italian expression corresponding to singer-songwriters in English. The word is a
portmanteau
A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordsDomenico Modugno with his song " Volare (Nel blu dipinto di blu)", a huge best seller in 1958;
other early ''cantautori'', who begun their career in the late 50s, are
Gino Paoli
Gino Paoli (; born 23 September 1934 in Monfalcone) is an Italian singer-songwriter. He is a seminal figure who has written a number of songs widely regarded as classics in Italian popular music, including: " Il cielo in una stanza", "Che cos ...
,
Luigi Tenco
Luigi Tenco (21 March 1938 – 27 January 1967) was an Italian singer-songwriter.
Biography
Tenco was born in Cassine (province of Alessandria) in 1938, the son of Teresa Zoccola and Giuseppe Tenco. He never knew his father, who died in uncle ...
,
Umberto Bindi
Umberto Bindi (12 May 1932 – 23 May 2002) was an Italian singer-songwriter. He is especially known for the popular song he co-wrote with Gino Paoli, ''Il Mio Mondo'' (" You're My World"), which he recorded in Italian in 1963. It was later perfo ...
,
Giorgio Gaber
Giorgio Gaber (), byname of Giorgio Gaberscik (25 January 1939 – 1 January 2003), was an Italian singer, composer, actor, and playwright. He was also an accomplished guitar player and author of one of the first rock songs in Italian ("Ciao ti ...
and
Enzo Jannacci
Vincenzo Jannacci (3 June 1935 – 29 March 2013), more commonly known as Enzo Jannacci (), was an Italian singer-songwriter, pianist, actor and comedian. He is regarded as one of the most important artists in the post-war Italian music scene.
...
.
Fabrizio De André
Fabrizio Cristiano De André (; 18 February 1940 – 11 January 1999) was an Italian singer-songwriter, the most prominent ''cantautore'' of his time. His 40-year career reflects his interests in concept albums, literature, poetry, political pr ...
,
Lucio Battisti
Lucio Battisti (5 March 1943 – 9 September 1998) was an influential Italian singer-songwriter and composer. He is widely recognized for songs that defined the late 1960s and 1970s era of Italian songwriting.
Battisti released 18 studio albums ...
and
Francesco Guccini
Francesco Guccini (, born 14 June 1940) is an Italian singer-songwriter, considered one of the most important '' cantautori'' of his time. During the five decades of his music career he has recorded 16 studio albums and collections, and 6 live a ...
began their career in the 60s, while
Edoardo Bennato
Edoardo Bennato (born 23 July 1946, Naples, Campania, Italy) is an Italian singer-songwriter. He is the brother of the singer-songwriter Eugenio Bennato.
He is considered one of the greatest Italian rockers, a genre that he has often combined wi ...
Francesco De Gregori
Francesco De Gregori OMRI (born 4 April 1951) is an Italian singer-songwriter. In Italy, he is popularly known as "Il Principe dei cantautori" ("The Prince of the singer-songwriters"), a nickname referring to the elegance of his lyrics.
He is of ...
,
Franco Battiato
Francesco "Franco" Battiato (; 23 March 1945 – 18 May 2021) was an Italian musician, singer, composer, filmmaker and, under the pseudonym Süphan Barzani, also a painter. Battiato's songs contain esotericism, esoteric, philosophy, philosophica ...
,
Rino Gaetano
Salvatore Antonio "Rino" Gaetano (29 October 1950 – 2 June 1981) was an Italian musician and singer-songwriter. He is famous for his satirical songs and oblique yet incisive political commentary. He is remembered for his raspy voice, for the he ...
,
Ivano Fossati
Ivano Alberto Fossati (born 21 September 1951) is an Italian pop singer from Genoa. He was a member of the progressive rock group Delirium and has worked with Fabrizio De André, Riccardo Tesi, Anna Oxa, Mia Martini, Ornella Vanoni, Shirley Bass ...
,
Antonello Venditti
Antonio "Antonello" Venditti (born 8 March 1949) is an Italian singer-songwriter and pianist who became famous in the 1970s for the social themes of his songs.
Biography
Antonello Venditti was born in Rome, the son of Vincenzino Italo Venditti f ...
,
Claudio Baglioni
Claudio Baglioni (; born 16 May 1951) is an Italian pop singer-songwriter and musician. His career has been going on for over 50 years. Some songs from the 70s are part of Italian culture such as ''E tu come stai?''. In the 80s he released the ...
,
Pino Daniele
Giuseppe Daniele (19 March 1955 – 4 January 2015), known as Pino Daniele, was an Italian singer, songwriter and musician. His influences covered a wide number of genres, including pop, blues, jazz, and Italian and Middle Eastern music.
Biograp ...
,
Roberto Vecchioni
Roberto Vecchioni (born 25 June 1943) is an Italian singer-songwriter, singer-lyricist, lyricist, teacher and writer.
Biography
Vecchioni was born in Carate Brianza, Province of Monza and Brianza, to a Neapolitan family . In 1968 he graduated i ...
,
Angelo Branduardi
Angelo Branduardi (born 12 February 1950) is an Italian folk/folk rock singer-songwriter and composer who scored relative success in Italy and European countries such as France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands and Greece.
Biography
Branduardi wa ...
and Eugenio Finardi all appeared in the 70s.
Their songs are still popular today, often telling stories of marginalized (De André, Guccini, Dalla) and rebellious people (Finardi, De Gregori, Venditti), or having a political background (Venditti, Guccini).
Branduardi was instead much more influenced by Medieval and Baroque musical styles, while his lyrics are usually inspired by ancient fables. Battiato started as a
progressive rock
Progressive rock (shortened as prog rock or simply prog; sometimes conflated with art rock) is a broad genre of rock music that developed in the United Kingdom and United States through the mid- to late 1960s, peaking in the early 1970s. Init ...
and cultivated music artist in the 1970s, shifting to an original blend of pop, electronic, new wave, and world music in the 1980s.
Those ''canutautori'' linked to the city of
Genoa
Genoa ( ; it, Genova ; lij, Zêna ). is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the List of cities in Italy, sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015, 594,733 people lived within the city's administrative limits. As of the 2011 Italian ce ...
(De André, Paoli, Bindi, Tenco, Baccini, etc.) are also referred as members of the Genoese School.
The Neapolitan ''cantautore''
Pino Daniele
Giuseppe Daniele (19 March 1955 – 4 January 2015), known as Pino Daniele, was an Italian singer, songwriter and musician. His influences covered a wide number of genres, including pop, blues, jazz, and Italian and Middle Eastern music.
Biograp ...
has often fused genres as diverse as R&B, fusion, blues, pop, jazz, and
tarantella
() is a group of various southern Italian folk dances originating in the regions of Calabria, Campania and Puglia. It is characterized by a fast upbeat tempo, usually in time (sometimes or ), accompanied by tambourines. It is among the mo ...
to produce a sound uniquely his own, with lyrics variously in Italian, Neapolitan, or English. Similarly
Paolo Conte
Paolo Conte (; born 6 January 1937) is an Italian singer, pianist, songwriter and lawyer known for his distinctly grainy, resonant voice. His compositions fuse Italian and Mediterranean sounds with jazz, boogie and elements of the French and L ...
was often tagged as a ''cantautore'', but was more into the jazz tradition.
In the 1980s
Vasco Rossi
Vasco Rossi (born 7 February 1952), also known mononymously as Vasco or with the nickname Il Blasco, is an Italian singer-songwriter and poet. During his career, he has published 30 albums (not including unofficial releases) and has written over ...
was renowned for his blend of blues-tinged rock music mixed with Italian melodies.
He was nicknamed the "only Italian rockstar" (''l'unica rockstar italiana'') by his fans.
With a mixture between international sounds and Italian lyrics, in the 2000s
Bugo
Cristian Bugatti, also known as Bugo (born 2 August 1973 in Rho (MI), Italy) is an Italian singer-songwriter, artist and actor. He spent his youth in the rice fields of Cerano, in the Province of Novara in the Piedmont region. A self-taught arti ...
become the "fantautore", a neologism coined for him. Despite not having achieved great fame, he is considered the pioneer of the renewal of Italian songwriting, far from the politicized of the 70s.
In the last 25 years the genre has been mainly represented by
Samuele Bersani
Samuele Bersani (born 1 October 1970, in Rimini, Italy) is an Italian singer-songwriter. He received the " Mia Martini" Critics Award at the Sanremo Music Festival in 2000 and in 2012, with the songs "Replay" and "Un pallone", respectively.
His ...
Daniele Silvestri
Daniele Silvestri (born 18 August 1968) is an Italian singer-songwriter and musician.
Career
Silvestri debuted in 1994, releasing his eponymous album. The set received a Targa Tenco for Best Debut Album. In 1995, he competed in the Newcomers' S ...
,
Simone Cristicchi
Simone Cristicchi (born 5 February 1977 in Rome) is an Italian singer and composer.
Biography
Cristicchi won the 57th edition of the Sanremo music festival in 2007 and also the Mia Martini
Mia Martini (; born Domenica Rita Adriana Bertè ...
).
The word has been borrowed into other languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, and
Catalan
Catalan may refer to:
Catalonia
From, or related to Catalonia:
* Catalan language, a Romance language
* Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia
Places
* 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...
''cantautor'', French ''chantauteur'', Maltese ''kantawtur'',
Romanian
Romanian may refer to:
*anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania
**Romanians, an ethnic group
**Romanian language, a Romance language
*** Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language
** Romanian cuisine, tradition ...
''cantautor'', and
Slovenian
Slovene or Slovenian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Slovenia, a country in Central Europe
* Slovene language, a South Slavic language mainly spoken in Slovenia
* Slovenes
The Slovenes, also known as Slovenians ( sl, Sloven ...
''kantavtor''.
Iberian-Latin American traditions
Beginning in the 1960s and following the Italian ''cantautori'' style of the 1950s (like the one of Domenico Modugno), many Latin American countries developed singer-songwriter traditions that adopted elements from various popular styles. The first such tradition was the mid-1960s invention of
nueva canción
Nueva canción (European , ; 'new song') is a left-wing social movement and musical genre in Latin America and the Iberian peninsula, characterized by folk-inspired styles and socially committed lyrics. ''Nueva canción'' is widely recognized to ...
, which took hold in Andean countries like Chile, Peru, Argentina and Bolivia.
At around the same time, the Brazilian popular style bossa nova was evolving into a politically charged singer-songwriter tradition called Tropicalismo. Two performers,
Gilberto Gil
Gilberto Passos Gil Moreira (; born 26 June 1942), is a Brazilian singer-songwriter and politician, known for both his musical innovation and political activism. From 2003 to 2008, he served as Brazil's Minister of Culture in the administration ...
and
Caetano Veloso
Caetano Emanuel Viana Teles Veloso (; born 7 August 1942) is a Brazilian composer, singer, guitarist, writer, and political activist. Veloso first became known for his participation in the Brazilian musical movement Tropicalismo, which encomp ...
became two of the most famous people in all of Brazil through their work in Tropicalismo.
After World War II it was developed in Italy a very prolific singer-songwriter (in Italian ''cantautore'') tradition, initially connected with the French school of the ''chansonniers'', and lately developed very heterogeneously. Although the term ''cantautore'' normally implies consistent sociopolitical content in lyrics, noteworthy performers in a more inclusive singer-songwriter categorization are: Domenico Modugno,
Luigi Tenco
Luigi Tenco (21 March 1938 – 27 January 1967) was an Italian singer-songwriter.
Biography
Tenco was born in Cassine (province of Alessandria) in 1938, the son of Teresa Zoccola and Giuseppe Tenco. He never knew his father, who died in uncle ...
,
Gino Paoli
Gino Paoli (; born 23 September 1934 in Monfalcone) is an Italian singer-songwriter. He is a seminal figure who has written a number of songs widely regarded as classics in Italian popular music, including: " Il cielo in una stanza", "Che cos ...
,
Sergio Endrigo
Sergio Endrigo (; 15 June 1933 – 7 September 2005) was an Italian singer-songwriter.
Born in Pola, Istria in Italy (now Pula, Croatia), he has been often compared—for style and nature—to authors of the so-called "Genoa school" like Gino P ...
,
Fabrizio De André
Fabrizio Cristiano De André (; 18 February 1940 – 11 January 1999) was an Italian singer-songwriter, the most prominent ''cantautore'' of his time. His 40-year career reflects his interests in concept albums, literature, poetry, political pr ...
,
Francesco De Gregori
Francesco De Gregori OMRI (born 4 April 1951) is an Italian singer-songwriter. In Italy, he is popularly known as "Il Principe dei cantautori" ("The Prince of the singer-songwriters"), a nickname referring to the elegance of his lyrics.
He is of ...
,
Antonello Venditti
Antonio "Antonello" Venditti (born 8 March 1949) is an Italian singer-songwriter and pianist who became famous in the 1970s for the social themes of his songs.
Biography
Antonello Venditti was born in Rome, the son of Vincenzino Italo Venditti f ...
,
Roberto Vecchioni
Roberto Vecchioni (born 25 June 1943) is an Italian singer-songwriter, singer-lyricist, lyricist, teacher and writer.
Biography
Vecchioni was born in Carate Brianza, Province of Monza and Brianza, to a Neapolitan family . In 1968 he graduated i ...
,
Ivano Fossati
Ivano Alberto Fossati (born 21 September 1951) is an Italian pop singer from Genoa. He was a member of the progressive rock group Delirium and has worked with Fabrizio De André, Riccardo Tesi, Anna Oxa, Mia Martini, Ornella Vanoni, Shirley Bass ...
Francesco Guccini
Francesco Guccini (, born 14 June 1940) is an Italian singer-songwriter, considered one of the most important '' cantautori'' of his time. During the five decades of his music career he has recorded 16 studio albums and collections, and 6 live a ...
and
Franco Battiato
Francesco "Franco" Battiato (; 23 March 1945 – 18 May 2021) was an Italian musician, singer, composer, filmmaker and, under the pseudonym Süphan Barzani, also a painter. Battiato's songs contain esotericism, esoteric, philosophy, philosophica ...
.
In neighbouring Malta, the main singer-songwriters are Walter Micallef, Manwel Mifsud and Vince Fabri. They all perform in Maltese.
Spain and Portugal have also had singer-songwriter traditions, which are sometimes said to have drawn on Latin elements. Catalonia is known for the
Nova Cançó
A nova (plural novae or novas) is a transient astronomical event that causes the sudden appearance of a bright, apparently "new" star (hence the name "nova", which is Latin for "new") that slowly fades over weeks or months. Causes of the dramat ...
tradition – exemplified by
Joan Manuel Serrat
Joan Manuel Serrat i Teresa (; born 27 December 1943) is a Spanish musician, singer and composer. He is considered one of the most important figures of modern, popular music in both the Spanish and Catalan languages.
Serrat's lyrical style ...
and
Lluís Llach
Lluís Llach i Grande (; born 7 May 1948) is a Catalan singer-songwriter, novelist and politician from Spain. He is one of the main representatives of the ''nova cançó'' genre and an outspoken advocate of the right to self-determination of ...
; the Portuguese folk/protest singer and songwriter
José Afonso
José Manuel Cerqueira Afonso dos Santos (2 August 1929 – 23 February 1987), known professionally as José Afonso and also popularly known as Zeca Afonso or simply Zeca, was a Portuguese singer-songwriter. One of the most influential folk and ...
helped lead a revival of Portuguese folk culture, including a modernized, more socially aware form of
fado
Fado (; "destiny, fate") is a music genre that can be traced to the 1820s in Lisbon, Portugal, but probably has much earlier origins. Fado historian and scholar Rui Vieira Nery states that "the only reliable information on the history of fado was ...
called nova canção. Following Portugal's Carnation Revolution of 1974, nova canção became more politicized and was known as canto livre. Another important Spain singer-songwriters are
Joaquín Sabina
Joaquín Ramón Martínez Sabina (born 12 February 1949) is a Spanish musician, singer, composer, and poet. His songs usually treat about love, heartbreaks and society with a large usage of literary figures similarly to the baroque-literature st ...
,
José Luis Perales
José Luis Perales Morillas (born 18 January 1945) is a Spanish singer and songwriter. He has recorded 27 albums and 50 million copies sold worldwide. His compositions have been recorded by singers such as Vikki Carr, Bertín Osborne, Ra ...
and
Luis Eduardo Aute
Luis Eduardo Aute Gutiérrez (13 September 1943 – 4 April 2020) was a Spanish musician, singer, composer, and film director.
Biography First years in the Philippines
Luis Eduardo Aute was born in Manila on 13 September 1943. His father, a Ca ...
.
In the latter part of the 1960s and into the 1970s, socially and politically aware singer-songwriters like
Silvio Rodríguez
Silvio Rodríguez Domínguez (born 29 November 1946) is a Cuban musician, and leader of the Nueva Trova movement.
He is widely considered Cuba's best folk singer and arguably one of Latin America's greatest singer-songwriters. Known for his in ...
and Pablo Milanés emerged in Cuba, birthing a genre known as
nueva trova
Nueva Trova (, "new trova") is a movement in Cuban music that emerged around 1967/68 after the Cuban Revolution of 1959, and the consequent political and social changes.
Nueva Trova has its roots in the traditional trova, but differs from it beca ...
. Trova as a genre has had broad influence across Latin America. In Mexico, for example, canción yucateca on the
Yucatán Peninsula
The Yucatán Peninsula (, also , ; es, Península de Yucatán ) is a large peninsula in southeastern Mexico and adjacent portions of Belize and Guatemala. The peninsula extends towards the northeast, separating the Gulf of Mexico to the north ...
and trova serrana in the
Sierra Juárez, Oaxaca
The Sierra Juárez is a range of mountains in Oaxaca state, Mexico between latitudes 17°20'-17°50'N and longitudes 96°15'-97°00'W, with an area of about 1,700 km² (656 sq mi). It is part of the Sierra Madre de Oaxaca. The range is separa ...
are both regional adaptations of trova. Today, Guatemalan
Ricardo Arjona
Edgar Ricardo Arjona Algadeoro (born 19 January 1964), known as Ricardo Arjona (), is a Guatemalan singer-songwriter. Arjona is one of the most successful and best-selling Latin American artists of all time, with more than 80 million records so ...
qualifies as Latin America's most commercially successful singer-songwriter. Although sociopolitical engagement is uneven in his oeuvre, some see Arjona's more engaged works as placing him in the tradition of the Italian ''cantautori''.
In the mid-1970s, a singer-songwriter tradition called canto popular emerged in Uruguay.
With the influence of Tropicalismo, Traditional Samba and Bossa Nova, MPB (
Música popular brasileira
Música popular brasileira (, ''Popular Brazilian Music'') or MPB is a trend in post-bossa nova urban popular music in Brazil that revisits typical Brazilian styles such as samba, samba-canção and baião and other Brazilian regional music, com ...
), or Brazilian Popular Music, became highly singer-songwriter based. For years solo artists would dominate Brazilian popular music with romantic cynicism alla Jobim or subliminal anti-government messages alla
Chico Buarque
Francisco Buarque de Hollanda (born 19 June 1944), popularly known simply as Chico Buarque, is a Brazilian singer-songwriter, guitarist, composer, playwright, writer, and poet. He is best known for his music, which often includes social, economic, ...
. After the end of the
military dictatorship in Brazil
The military dictatorship in Brazil ( pt, ditadura militar) was established on 1 April 1964, after a coup d'état by the Brazilian Armed Forces, with support from the United States government, against President João Goulart. The Brazilian dicta ...
, Brazilian music became less politically and socially conscious. The censored
Raul Seixas
Raul Santos Seixas (; 28 June 1945 – 21 August 1989) allmusic Biography/ref> was a Brazilian rock composer, singer, songwriter and producer. He is sometimes called the "Father of Brazilian Rock" and "Maluco Beleza", the last one roughly transl ...
or the humorous spiritualist
Jorge Ben
Jorge Duílio Lima Menezes (born March 22, 1939) is a Brazilian popular musician, performing under the stage name Jorge Ben Jor since the 1980s, though commonly known by his former stage name Jorge Ben (). His characteristic style fuses samba ...
were slowly obscured by funk carioca, axé music and Brazilian disco. In recent years, however, a new stock of socially conscious Brazilian singer-songwriters is beginning to break the almost strictly dance-music momentum that has reigned since the 1980s (see the 'Brazilian folk/folk-rock sub-article in
Brazilian Music
The music of Brazil encompasses various regional musical styles influenced by European, American, African and Amerindian forms. Brazilian music developed some unique and original styles such as forró, repente, coco de roda, axé, sertanejo, ...
).
Soviet Union and Russia
Since the 1960s, those singers who wrote songs outside the Soviet establishment have been known as "bards". The first songs traditionally referred to as bard songs are thought to be written in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and the very existence of the genre is traditionally originated from the amateur activities of the Soviet intelligentsia, namely mass backpacking movement and the students' song movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Many bards performed their songs in small groups of people using a
Russian guitar
The Russian guitar (sometimes referred to as a "Gypsy guitar") is an acoustic seven-string guitar that was developed in Russia toward the end of the 18th century: it shares most of its organological features with the Spanish guitar, although som ...
, rarely if ever would they be accompanied by other musicians or singers. Though, bards using piano or accordion are also known. Those who became popular held modest concerts. The first nationwide-famous bards (starting their career in the 1950s) are traditionally referred to as the First Five: Mikhail Ancharov, Alexander Gorodnitsky,
Novella Matveyeva
Novella Nikolayevna Matveyeva (russian: Новелла Николаевна Матвеева; 7 October 1934 in Pushkin, Saint Petersburg – 4 September 2016, Moscow Oblast) was a Russian bard, poet, writer, screenwriter, dramatist, and literar ...
,
Bulat Okudzhava
Bulat Shalvovich Okudzhava (russian: link=no, Булат Шалвович Окуджава; ka, ბულატ ოკუჯავა; hy, Բուլատ Օկուջավա; May 9, 1924 – June 12, 1997) was a Soviet and Russian poet, writer, musici ...
,
Yuri Vizbor
Yuri Iosifovich Vizbor (russian: Юрий Иосифович Визбор; June 20, 1934 – September 17, 1984) was a Soviet bard and poet as well as a theatre and film actor.
Vizbor was born in Moscow where he lived for most of his life. He ...
. In the 1960s, they were joined by
Vladimir Vysotsky
Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotsky ( rus, links=no, Владимир Семёнович Высоцкий, p=vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr sʲɪˈmʲɵnəvʲɪtɕ vɨˈsotskʲɪj; 25 January 1938 – 25 July 1980), was a Soviet singer-songwriter, poet, and actor ...
Yuliy Kim
Yuliy Chersanovich Kim (russian: Юлий Черсанович Ким, ko, 율리 킴; born 23 December 1936, Moscow) is a Russian bard, composer, poet, and songwriter. His songs, encompassing everything from mild humor to biting political sati ...
, and many others.
In the course of the 1970s, the shift to the classical 6-string guitar took place, and now, a Russian guitar is a rare bird with the bards. In the same period, the movement of KSP (Kluby Samodeyatelnoy Pesni – amateur song fan clubs) emerged, providing the bards with highly educated audience, and up to the end of the 1980s being their key promotion engine. Bards were rarely permitted to record their music, partly given the political nature of many songs, partly due to their vague status in the strictly organised state-supported show business establishment of the USSR. As a result, bard tunes usually made their way around as folk lore, from mouth to mouth, or via the copying of amateur recordings (sometimes referred as
magnitizdat
''Magnitizdat'' () was the process of copying and distributing audio tape recordings that were not commercially available in the Soviet Union. It is analogous to ''samizdat'', the method of disseminating written works that could not be officially ...
) made at concerts, particularly those songs that were of political nature. Bard poetry differs from other poetry mainly in the fact that it is sung along with a simple guitar melody as opposed to being spoken. Another difference is that this form of poetry focuses less on style and more on meaning. This means that fewer stylistic devices are used, and the
poetry
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...
often takes the form of narrative. What separates bard poetry from other songs is the fact that the music is far less important than the lyrics;
chord progression
In a musical composition, a chord progression or harmonic progression (informally chord changes, used as a plural) is a succession of chords. Chord progressions are the foundation of harmony in Western musical tradition from the common practice ...
s are often very simple and tend to repeat from one bard song to another. On the other hand, in the USSR the chief bard supporter was the state Union of Composers, and the main bard hater was the state Union of Writers. A far more obvious difference was the commerce-free nature of the genre: songs were written to be sung and not to be sold. The similar genre dominated by singers-songwriters is known as sung poetry in other Post-Soviet countries.
Bulgaria
Singer-songwriters are popular in Bulgaria under the name "bards", or "poets with guitars". Their tradition is a mixture of traditional folk motifs, city folklore from the early 20th century, and modern influences. In the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, the Communist regime in the country started to tolerate the Bulgarian "bards", promoting the so-called "political songs", performed usually by one-man bands. A national festival tradition was established, under the title "Alen Mak" (Red Poppy), a symbol with strong Communist meaning in Bulgaria. At the same time, there were some prominent underground figures which were against the official Communist Party line, such as Angel "Jendema" Angelov, Yavor "Yavkata" Rilov, and Velizar "Valdes" Vankov.
After the collapse of Communism in 1989, the singer-songwriters' tradition was re-established. Currently, the Bulgarian "bards" enjoy several festivals (local and international) per year, namely the PoKi Festival (Poets with Guitars, Poetic Strings) in the town of Harmanli, the Bardfest in Lovech, the Sofia Evenings of Singer-Songwriters, and others. Major figures in the Bulgarian tradition are Dimitar Taralezhkov, Angel "Jendema" Angelov, Yavor "Yavkata" Rilov, Velizar "Valdes" Vankov, Dimitar Dobrev, Andro Stubel, Branimir "Bunny" Stoykov, Dorothea Tabakova, Mihail Belchev, Assen Maslarski, Grisha Trifonov, Plamen Stavrev, Vladimir Levkov, Margarita Drumeva, Maria Batchvarova, Plamen Sivov, and Krasimir Parvanov.
Romania
Despite the
communist
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
isolation, the tradition of the singer-songwriter in Romania flourished beginning with the end of the 1960s and it was put in the context of
folk music
Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has b ...
, with its three main styles in Romania: ethno folk, American-style folk and lyrical (cult) folk. The framework for many of these initiatives came under the form of
Cenaclul Flacăra
Cenaclul Flacăra (Romanian for "The Flame Literary Circle") was a cultural and artistic movement in the Socialist Republic of Romania led by poet Adrian Păunescu. Between 1973 and 1985, it organized shows and concerts which, although rebellious ...
, a series of mass cultural events with an inevitable ideological touch. Still, with the merit of supporting great opening initiatives: the appropriation of Western artists like
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...
,
Joan Baez
Joan Chandos Baez (; born January 9, 1941) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist. Her contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest and social justice. Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing more ...
and others from the
Woodstock
Woodstock Music and Art Fair, commonly referred to as Woodstock, was a music festival held during August 15–18, 1969, on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York, United States, southwest of the town of Woodstock. Billed as "an Aq ...
generation, the public performance of gospel-like music, the opening to big international issues (pop culture, accountability of the leadership, tension surging during the Cold War-with surprisingly neutral positions etc.).
Overall, the Romanian folk, in general, could be marked as an underground cultural movement, somewhere between non-aligned and protest music.
Liedermacher, the German tradition
Rooted in the European Bänkelsang ("bench-singing") and Moritat traditions while also taking immediate inspiration from the French chanson scene and the American folk music revival, the 1960s and 1970s saw the emergence of a whole generation of German-language singer-songwriters called Liedermacher ("songmakers"), among them
Hannes Wader
Hannes Wader (born Hans Eckard Wader on 23 June 1942) is a German singer-songwriter (" Liedermacher"). He has been an important figure in German leftist circles since the 1970s, with his songs covering such themes as socialist and communist resis ...
,
Franz Josef Degenhardt
Franz Josef Degenhardt (3 December 193114 November 2011) was a German poet, satirist, novelist, and – first and foremost – a folksinger/songwriter ( Liedermacher) with decidedly left-wing politics. He was also a lawyer, bearing the academic d ...
,
Reinhard Mey
Reinhard Friedrich Michael Mey (born 21 December 1942) is a German "Liedermacher" (literally "songmaker", a German-style singer-songwriter). In France he is known as ''Frédérik Mey''.
By 2009, Mey had released 27 German albums, and generally ...
and
Konstantin Wecker
Konstantin Alexander Wecker (born 1 June 1947, Munich) is a German singer-songwriter; he also works as a composer, author, and actor.
Life and work
Classically educated at the Wilhelmsgymnasium, Wecker got one of his first jobs as a songwriter a ...
from West Germany,
Wolf Biermann
Karl Wolf Biermann (; born 15 November 1936) is a German singer-songwriter, poet, and former East German dissident. He is perhaps best known for the 1968 song "Ermutigung" and his expatriation from East Germany in 1976.
Early life
Biermann was b ...
from East Germany as well as
Ludwig Hirsch
Ludwig Hirsch (28 February 1946 – 24 November 2011) was an Austrian singer/songwriter and actor.
Life and work
Hirsch was born in Sankt Magdalena am Lemberg, Styria, grew up in the Leopoldstadt district of Vienna and first studied graphic arts ...
and
Georg Danzer
Georg Franz Danzer (7 October 1946, in Vienna – 21 June 2007, in Asperhofen, Lower Austria) was an Austrian singer-songwriter. Although he is credited as one of the pioneers of Austropop (most famous are his comic songs "Jö schau" (about a ...
from Austria. With regards to content and style, the Liedermacher spectrum ranges from political balladeering to rather observational storytelling and love songs. The lyrics often deal with topics such as
social injustice
Social justice is justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society. In Western and Asian cultures, the concept of social justice has often referred to the process of ensuring that individuals f ...
,
militarism
Militarism is the belief or the desire of a government or a people that a state should maintain a strong military capability and to use it aggressively to expand national interests and/or values. It may also imply the glorification of the mili ...
,
consumerism
Consumerism is a social and economic order that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts. With the Industrial Revolution, but particularly in the 20th century, mass production led to overproduction—the supp ...
,
environmental issue
Environmental issues are effects of human activity on the biophysical environment, most often of which are harmful effects that cause environmental degradation. Environmental protection is the practice of protecting the natural environment on t ...
s or the repercussions of the German Nazi past, often expressing technoskepticism and
anti-establishment
An anti-establishment view or belief is one which stands in opposition to the conventional social, political, and economic principles of a society. The term was first used in the modern sense in 1958, by the British magazine ''New Statesman'' ...
views.
Sweden
In the mid-1960s, Sweden witnessed the renaissance of the "trubadur", the Swedish version of the singer-songwriter. Cornelis Vreeswijk and
Fred Åkerström
Fred Åkerström (27 January 1937 – 9 August 1985) was a Swedish folk guitarist and singer particularly noted for his interpretations of Carl Michael Bellman's music, and his own work of the typically Swedish song segment named ''visa''. The ...
were particularly influential in their efforts to blend the heritage of the "
visa
Visa most commonly refers to:
*Visa Inc., a US multinational financial and payment cards company
** Visa Debit card issued by the above company
** Visa Electron, a debit card
** Visa Plus, an interbank network
*Travel visa, a document that allows ...
" (a specific way to render simple stanzaic poems or songs, given distinction by artists such as
Carl Michael Bellman
Carl Michael Bellman (; 4 February 1740 – 11 February 1795) was a Swedish songwriter, composer, musician, poet and entertainer. He is a central figure in the Swedish song tradition and remains a powerful influence in Swedish music, as well ...
and
Evert Taube
Axel Evert Taube (; 12 March 1890 – 31 January 1976) was a Swedish author, artist, composer and singer. He is widely regarded as one of Sweden's most respected musicians and the foremost troubadour of the Swedish ballad tradition in the 20th ce ...
) with modern approaches to balladeering.Alf Björnberg, Thomas Bossius, eds., ''Made in Sweden: Studies in Popular Music'', (2016), New York: Routledge, pp. 53–4.
Netherlands
Ede Staal
Ede Ulfert Staal (2 August 1941 – 22 July 1986) was a Dutch singer-songwriter from the Northern province of Groningen (province), Groningen who sang mainly in Gronings dialect.
Early life
Ede Staal was born in 1941 in Warffum, the son of a Nati ...
(
Warffum
Warffum (Gronings: Waarvum)is a village in the Dutch province of Groningen. It is located in the municipality of Het Hogeland. It had a population of around 2,175 in January 2017.
History
The history of Warffum can be traced back to at least 6 ...
) (1941–1986), was a Dutch singer-songwriter from the Northern province of
Groningen
Groningen (; gos, Grunn or ) is the capital city and main municipality of Groningen province in the Netherlands. The ''capital of the north'', Groningen is the largest place as well as the economic and cultural centre of the northern part of t ...
who sang mainly in the Groninger dialect of Dutch.
See also
*
List of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, established in 1983 and located in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, is dedicated to recording the history of some of the best-known and most influential musicians, bands, producers, and others that have in some m ...
*
List of singer-songwriters
This is a list of singer-songwriters who write, compose, and perform their own musical material. The list is divided into two sections to differentiate between artists categorized as singer-songwriters and others who do not fall under the definiti ...
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Protest songs in the United States
Protest songs in the United States are a tradition that dates back to the early 18th century and have persisted and evolved as an aspect of American culture through the present day. Many American social movements have inspired protest songs span ...
Griot
A griot (; ; Manding: jali or jeli (in N'Ko: , ''djeli'' or ''djéli'' in French spelling); Serer: kevel or kewel / okawul; Wolof: gewel) is a West African historian, storyteller, praise singer, poet, and/or musician.
The griot is a repos ...
, West African songwriting tradition
References
Further reading
* Alarik, Scott, ''
Deep Community
''Deep Community: Adventures in the Modern Folk Underground'' is a book by ''Boston Globe'' journalist Scott Alarik with photographs by Robert Corwin. It was published in 2003 by Black Wolf Press. The book is a compilation of over 120 articles ...
'', (2003), Black Wolf Press Here and Now : "Deep Community" by Scott Alarik - 5/12/2003 * Hoffman, Frank fro (''modified for the web by Robert Birkline'')
* Knopfler, David * DiMartino, Dave ''singer-songwriters: Pop Music's Performer-Composers from A to Zevon'' (1994), Billboard Books(''web search required'').
* Rodgers, Jeffrey P., ''The Complete Singer-Songwriter: A Troubadour's Guide to Writing, Performing, Recording & Business'', (2003) Backbeat Books (''web search required'').
* ''Singer-songwriters of the Rock Era'' (1996), Hal Leonard (sheet music)(''web search required'').
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