Genre story · Alternative
Anti-Folk
Folk songs played with punk's irreverence and the freedom to sound nothing like a folk revival.
Anti-folk emerged as a New York scene during the early-to-mid-1980s, when performers frustrated with the rules of established Folk venues made their own opportunities. Artist and organizer Lach recalls opening the Fort in 1984 after early encounters with the Greenwich Village folk circuit. The movement allowed humor, ragged playing, confrontational lyrics and unusual stage performances to sit beside acoustic songwriting. A later generation around the SideWalk Cafe included Jeffrey Lewis, Kimya Dawson and the Moldy Peaches.
The performance can be untidy
Anti-folk often uses ordinary acoustic guitar and a simple rhythm, but songs can turn theatrical, painfully direct, deliberately clumsy or unexpectedly funny. Its connection to punk is less about loud amplifiers than about an openness to people whose music would not fit a conventional folk-club format. There is no one mandatory vocal style or political position.
An actual local story
Anti-Folk overlaps with Folk Punk and independent singer-songwriter music, but the downtown New York scene and its specific venues are important to understanding its name. Not every humorous acoustic song belongs to it, and later media attention should not erase the organizers who established the movement in the 1980s.
Essential recordings
- 2001The Moldy PeachesThe Moldy PeachesA later, internationally visible offshoot of the scene.
- 2001Jeffrey LewisThe Last Time I Did Acid I Went Insane and Other FavoritesRambling storytelling and deliberately unvarnished performances.
- 2006Kimya DawsonRemember That I Love YouDirect, playful and vulnerable songs from a participant in the later New York network.