Much as scientists, in their research, have always drawn on the body of knowledge and the methods of their predecessors, performers and songwriters make use of the songs, styles, and musical ideas and techniques of those who came before them. The music they all draw on in one way or another, when you trace it back far enough, is folk music. Nowadays, record companies and pop music critics are likely to call anything with a pleasant sound and acoustic guitar, harmonica, or banjo accompaniment "folk music".

To Park (1967), folk music is part of a folk culture. And the culture's lore, including its ballads and stories, is passed down by word-of-mouth from generation to generation.

Folk music can be traced far back hundreds, maybe thousands, of years. Indians, who inhabited this land, performed an endless variety of songs to thank the spirits who controlled all things, to accompany their day-to-day activities, to tell the tales of the mysteries of life, and to record the tribe's greatest adventures. By the time the first English colonists landed at Jamestown in 1607, British folk music, in a more or less recognizable form, was a thousand years old.

In the late summer of 1619, a Dutch ship landed at the English settlement in Virginia and sold twenty black Africans into slavery. In the coming years, hundreds of thousands followed these confused, frightened Africans into enslavement in America. As a harsh, careless and crucial time passed, they produced some of the most beautiful and powerful music ever performed anywhere in the world.

People moved on, and as they did, they brought their songs, tunes and culture with them. When one group of people met another from a different part of the country, each learned from the other, and both had new songs to pass on to their friends and family. In this way, the songs traveled, mixed, and changed. The major influences on American folk songs can be divided into three parts: the American Indian music, the Anglo-American music, and the Afro-American music. Eventually, some of the shifting around slowed, and the folks of each part of the culture developed a fairly consistent singing style and a body of songs suited to their needs and likes.