Jock Jams)-is the last remaining musical monoculture.Īs the head archivist at Smithson Folkways, Jeff Place has spent the past 30 years considering, branding and deciding what is and isn’t canonical “folk.” “Most people consider the definition of folk music to be the record-store definition: a singer-songwriter, acoustic guitar, plays in a coffee house,” he told me on a recent afternoon. This argument poses two counter-intuitive narratives: first, that the traditional understanding of a folk song has become anachronistic to the point of stereotype, and second, that the sports anthem-a genre most associated with the daft, soulless and unabashedly commercial aspects of songwriting (i.e. As the go-to sports anthem internationally, it’s very likely that “Seven Nation Army” may not only be the best-known musical phrase in popular music, but also the last Great American Folk Song. “After the one from ‘Satisfaction.’”Īt first blush that statement might appear audacious: how could what amounted to little more than an indie-rock anthem possibly be mentioned in the same breath as the Big Bang of teenage culture and, possibly, of modern rock ‘n roll itself? But upon closer inspection, it’s not audacious enough. “It might be the second-best-known guitar phrase in popular music,” Wilkinson noted. Wilkinson was referring to the popular seven-note passage from The White Stripes’ 2003 song, “Seven Nation Army,” which serves as both its verse and chorus. In his recent New Yorker profile on Jack White, writer Alec Wilkinson noted a rather awkward conjecture about the bon vivant, rock star, label owner and analogue enthusiast: “More people know a fragment of White’s music than know his name.”
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