Song Hunting: Folk Songs

Warning:  before you begin to search for a folk song, you need to know the answer to this very important question:  Is the song you want really a folk song, or is it a song in folk style that someone composed and copyrighted?  Many musicians never thought about it, so they don't understand that there is a difference.

(Numerous composed songs in folk style have achieved folk status due to their widespread popularity.  If someone composed them, however, DON'T look for them in collections of actual folk songs, because they won't be there.  Furthermore, DON'T use these copyrighted works as if they were public-domain music.  They aren't.  Example:  "Blowin' in the Wind":  Many people think it's a folk song, but the words and music are by Bob Dylan, who owns the copyright.)

If I can't answer this question, what do I do about it?

Search reference resources such as:

The Great Song Thesaurus, 2d ed., ed. by Roger Lax and Frederick Smith.  New York:  Oxford University Press, 1989.
WILLIS 4FL MUSIC REFERENCE:
ML128.S3 L4 1989

This very useful source mainly cites popular songs, but it also includes folk and traditional songs.  The authors list composers, lyricists, and dates for composed songs; they identify folk and traditional songs as such, and include countries and approximate dates of origin. 

If the work you're hunting really is a folk song, you can try searching by title or keyword in the online catalog, but this might not work.  Many folk song collections have lengthy tables of contents that aren't listed in anyone's online catalog.  If the catalog doesn't help, the answer to this question may help:  

What is the region, country or continent of the song's origin?  Many folk song collections focus on particular locales.  Our library has many such collections on the regular shelves, classified by country of origin.  You can find call numbers by searching in the online catalog.

Example: On the online catalog page, enter folk songs Scotland as keywords in a search box.  Set the material type pull-down to music scores and click the search button.

If you want to browse the shelves, many folk-song collections have call numbers ranging from the M1627s through the M1853s. 

Warning:  True folk songs often have variant titles.  Tables of contents in collections might include such variants.

Because true folk songs are in the public domain, there are many good websites that provide full-text scores, lyrics and MIDI files for them.  A particularly important site is the Digital Tradition Folksong Database, now hosted by The Mudcat Cafe.  This link will take you to their search page:http://www.mudcat.org/threads.cfm

Use their Lyrics & Knowledge Search box to search for lyrics and information about folk songs.

You can find many other sites by using a good search engine such as Google or Yahoo.