Talk:Neofolk/Archive 1

message: While we understand that musical taxonomy is a tricky subject and that the history and origin of new styles of music is often complex and nuanced, what you are doing is clearly sabotage.  Wikipedia is a wonderful example of democracy at its worst (and sadly, best).  Please stop.
Thank you,
- The Management
--ORG.618 05:30, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Wikiterrorism

message: As a Wikipedian with a strong interest in the neofolk movement for the last couple of years, who hasn't involved himself in the issues raised here yet, I guess it may be just time to add my two cents.
First of all, the term 'neuer deutscher Folk' appears rather questionable to me. I, too, have heard the term neofolk being applied to a movement of which DIJ, C93, and SI were part, when I first encountered the movement in 2001, two years before the alleged interview. On the other hand, I never heard the term 'neuer deutscher Folk' before, and the fact that Google has only 41 hits on this term seems to be a clear indicator that this is not an accepted term. Also note that neither 'Folk' nor 'folkish' are existing German words - on the other hand, 'Volk' (people), 'völkisch' (pertaining to the nation---a term which nowadays has strong associations with Nazi ideologies), and 'Volksmusik' (folk music) are. In my eyes, it therefore seems reasonable that the mentioning of the term 'neuer deutscher Folk' be removed from the article.
I have not heard the interview in question, but at least among people I have conversed with, the 'common' definition of neofolk seems to include Death In June, Sol Invictus, and Current 93: including those bands in the list therefore seems reasonable to me. In my experience, there is no clear-cut distinction between neofolk and apocyptic folk either: some bands (e.g. Forseti, Sonne Hagal) seem to be called neofolk exclusively, while for other bands (e.g. Sol Invictus, Current 93) both monikers seem to be in use. If, after looking into the matter further, it still appears to be the case that there are two irreconciliable points of view here, I'd personally say that it may just be fair to mention both sides in the article. The article as it stands currently, however, seems to have little merit, as it clearly appears to be the case that a large fraction of followers of the neofolk movement disagrees with a large part of its content.
Other things that, I believe, should at least be mentioned in the article in order for it to have any encyclopaedic value:
- Thematics of the neofolk movement. These include paganism, war-related topics (cf. Der Blutharsch), as well as a variety of esoteric topics (gnosticism, Thelema, and other branches of mysticism, also with artists often expressing interest in secret societies and the likes). Also it should, I believe, be mentioned, that traditionalist/anti-modernist views are fairly widespread in the movement.
- Associations that have been made between the neofolk movement and right wing politics. We should just not let this go unmentioned altogether, but instead try to present this controversial issue as objective as possible. Mention that a number of neofolk artists frequently touch upon WW2-themes, and use WW2/Nazi symbolism in their artwork, often with a clearly provocative intention. Mention that a number of neofolk artists is inspired by Julius Evola, a traditionalist writer who was connected to Mussolini at one point in is life, and who also has some general leanings towards fascist ideas. But also mention that pretty much none of the neofolk groups openly have a right-extremist agenda, and that the majority of the fans has no right-extremist ideas whatsoever. Mention that the neofolk movement is almost totally different from, let's say, the RAC and NSBM movements, and that it in no way can be considered to be a 'right-extremist' movement. Of course, this is a controversial issue, but at the very least this controverse should be reflected in the Wikipedia article.
- Connection to other musical movements. Quite a few neofolk artists also have occupied themselves with styles such as martial, dark ambient, noise, and other avant-garde styles of music. Often also neofolk is categorized as a subcategory within the goth scene, which is also the origin of a large fraction of the neofolk fanbase. Some neofolk groups (e.g. Of The Wand And The Moon, Weihan) have members that have been involved in the metal scene, and neofolk enjoys a small degree of popularity among some parts of the metal scene - particularly the black and doom metal movements.
The point of an encyclopaedia such as Wikipedia is to reflect reality; it is not to reflect how you believe reality should be. Let us try to achieve this with this article, providing not just a single, disputed, vision of what the neofolk movement is like, but rather a survey of the facts as well as the more controversial issues, including a representation of the various opinions.
Joost 18:29, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Just my two cents...

message: Look, Bloodofox, it's obvious that you're a Douglas P. fanboy and seem to have some sort of irrational aversion towards David Tibet, but trying to marginalize Tibet's influence and involvement in the scene and reduce it to "a brief flirtation" limited to when he was working with Douglas is merely silly, stupid, and revisionist. I somehow doubt that you are extensively familiar with Current 93's discography. Neither is Douglas appearing on seminal and/or definitely folky releases such as Of Ruine or Some Blazing Starre, All the Pretty Little Horsies or Sleep Has His House, to name a few. Current 93 play a great many of their folkiest tunes live still, and the track that has been released as a preview of the coming album, Black Ships ate the Sky is definitely folk based, and as expected, there's no trace of Douglas P. on that album either. --a43 November 6 2005 -- 00:30 (CEST)
:hi
:I loathe Tibet (Michael?). But I will admit if you ask certain neofolk groups today who has inspired them to make this kind of music many of them will mention C93. If Tibet should be mentioned in the article it should be only a brief line about C93 nothing more. It does not matter how much you guys love Tibet he has no involvement in this scene today. 
:Like it or not the neofolk genre belongs to a select group of artists who share common ideals and recurring themes such as paganism (but not limited to). This is the stigma of neofolk and why we have a neofolk genre in general. Any wrong associations with the genre by including artists who have nothing to do with the scene renders the neofolk term counterproductive and then we may as well just refer to everything as plain old folk.
:Let us just find some common ground and quit bickering. And whoever linked Apocolyptic Folk to Neofolk should think about fixing this blunder because the terms are NOT interchangeable. In my humble opinion there is nothing apocolyptic about Forseti :-)
:- Fleisch
::Like it or not the neofolk genre does not "belong" to anyone; it belongs to whoever is commonly agreed to be neofolk, whether a group of heathen-revivalists tries to coopt the word or not.  It is clear that "apocalyptic folk" and "neofolk" is not synonymous; the latter derives from the former, and is a generalization.  This is clear when looking at the common origins of C93 and DiJ: The first folkish music from both bands appeared on the 1987 C93 album Swastikas for Noddy (to which Douglas P contributed "Hello Angel", his first folk track).  Essentially the idea of using folk music in post-industrial music originated there; before that album, DiJ was basically a Joy Division sound-alke. --Delirium 06:04, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Tibet?

message: I have updated the definition. I have also cleaned up some of the related terms such as Apoc Folk which looked a bit messy with 6 seperate paragraphs and lots of extra info that really was not relevant to the term. I have removed the Wandervogel movement from the "See Also" section which someone can add again if they feel like it.
I have removed the "Well known" Neofolk artist section because I believe it will just cause more disputes in the future as to who and who is not well known. I suggest we put artists that are only neofolk or artists related to neofolk in the artists section instead.
I have also changed the format of External Links by borrowing the style of the German Neofolk definition. I'm sure they won't mind :-P
It looks like they are having problems agreeing on a definition as well, but their problems seem to be mainly political. 
Fleischbox 16:12, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Mass Edit

message: Could someone who knows more than I do (read: anything) about the band Changes go and edit their article? I get the impression that they're sort of important, and at any rate there's definitely more to say about them than that pathetic little stub that's there. Thanks for any help you can give! Cantara 06:01, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Alright, alright. I assumed that they were well-known, since when I saw them perform it seemed like everyone was familiar with them except me. Obviously if I do read anything about them I'll add it, but I was operating on the assumption that there were people out there who were knowledgable already. Cantara 21:16, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't let Fleisch discourage you. He's just a grumpy displaced kraut! I created a little Robert N. Taylor stub per your suggestion and will get around to updating the Changes page here in time. :bloodofox: 06:42, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

text: I've since updated the stub into a more informative article, although it could still use some more work. :bloodofox: 14:44, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Changes

message: It's not encyclopedic to create a list of links to band websites and festivals for a genre's External Links section.  If they are notable, they should be linked to within Wikipedia.  A lot of these linsk should be removed, and if no one has any major objection, I wil do it shortly.  WesleyDodds 05:34, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Feel free. I'll go through what you've changed and we'll go from there. :bloodofox: 09:34, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've removed most of them.  Band and label links on a genre page constitute promotion (they should appear on the pages of the bands and labels themselves) and foreign-language links have no place on the English Wiki.  I left the English fanzines and one of the festivals because they might be informative (haven't checked them out yet), but the External Links should be exclusively about information regarding the specific topic of the article.  Something like an online article about the genre would be a good example of an acceptable link.  WesleyDodds 04:29, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Band lists

message: Certain (usually anonymous users) keep adding him to the artist links, and others usually Bloodofox delete him (which i have no problem with, i'm just noting). What's going on with this exactly? I've heard him on a few neofolk based online radio stations and know that it's not unusual to see him connected to the scene via popular neofolk based websites like Fluxeuropa, but i'm personally not super familiar with his music myself so I can't make a judgement call. I'm wondering if this semi-edit war doesn't go back to the question "what makes up neofolk". Can the term Neofolk be a catch all for styles like martial and neo-classical or is it strictly now, only, connected to bands (or rather, as the case may be, specific albums) that are closely folk instrumental? Just curious.--Adrift* 04:15, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The user (it appears to be a single person) who keeps adding Von Thronstahl to the list never gives a reason as to why it should be there. Von Thronstahl is definitely martial music and even rock music but very questionably neofolk, I'd say. There's a few tracks that approach synthetic folk instrumentation but, really, it belongs here less than Der Blutharsch does - Their obvious initial inspiration. The very term "neofolk" implies folk instrumentation. There's the association of other genres, which we mention here, but the term is most often used to describe folk music of this vein. Being pretty familiar with their body of work and even having heavily contributed to the little Von Thronstahl Wikipedia article, I'd personally say that Von Thronstahl have more "rock" songs than anything approaching this sort of music. :bloodofox: 07:46, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Some of the earliest material (pre-Imperium Internum EP's and such, though Imperium Internum is partly neofolk as well) by Von Thronstahl was undoubtely neofolk, but, you are right, their later material is almost without exceptions martial music or military pop. 80.216.158.20 22:47, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Von Thronstahl 

message: What is that? Isn't it just in the last few years there has been some notable references to traditional folk music? Weren't earlier neo-folk rather inspired by folk rock and post-punk, and rather used acoustic guitars and samplers as main instruments than traditional folk instruments? 80.216.158.20 22:52, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: "Folk music-inspired" and "Typical instruments: Folk instruments"?

message: Does anyone agree with my opinion that post-punk or punk should be added as genre origins? Most early neofolk bands (except Changes) had roots in punk or post-punk bands, and I'd say the pre-1990 neofolk and post-punk/goth shares a lot of similiarities.
:Yeah, that seems reasonable. Death in June, for example, basically was a post-punk band until the mid-80s, and retained post-punk elements until at least the late 80s. --Delirium 05:37, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Origins

message: Wolff, the man behind Waldteufel, wrote an essay about neofolk music and related genres in 2001 for Esoterra Magazine entitled Ancestral Voices: Heathen Music in Germany:  It's full of well researched information and is a treasure trove of sources regarding the genre's association with Germanic neopaganism. Since we're lacking sources and we really need them, this should help out. :bloodofox: 17:31, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Markus Wolff

message: i'm not going to change the article right now, but... well, using julius evola and similar racist figures as inspirational source does, imho, count as flirting with fascism. critics who note that don't seem "misguided" to me. opinions other then "you're a fucking leftist"? please!  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.124.179.55 (talk) 12:46, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've removed the text because it refers to some specific compilations mainly surrounding the VAWS camp and is hardly representative of the genre itself. I am not sure why you were expecting such a harsh response. :bloodofox: 16:23, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There should probably be something (neutral and referenced) about it at some point though, because it's been a big controversy at times, especially in the German-language press. Death in June in particular is almost constantly battling legal problems, e.g. concert cancellations in both Switzerland and the U.S., and the indexing of "Rose Clouds of Holocaust". I seem to recall Strength Through Joy having some problems also. --Delirium 16:32, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There's actually only a handful of artists in the genre who have encountered any sort of problems and those are Death In June, Blood Axis and, in the past, Sol Invictus. I think I've recorded most of the issues that have occurred with Death In June on the DIJ Wikipedia article, so there we can mine any sources we may need. I don't know anything about STJ having some problems in the past but the name probably did cause some issues. Most of the controversy surrounds the martial industrial genre. After looking it over, the whole article needs to be expanded and updated with references and I will do so in time. :bloodofox: 16:38, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah I agree Martial Industrial is a lot more controversial. I'll see if I can dig up some source, but I thought I remembered some non-Nazi-related controversy with neofolk also, mostly over its Eurocentrism, which some left-wing German critics accuse of being ethnocentric/nationalistic/volkish. Belborn also got criticized for appearing on one of the VAWS compilations I think. --Delirium 17:23, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Replying to my own post, this (from die tageszeitung) is somewhat representative of the common attack pieces. First sentence of the subtitle: "A right-wing publisher organizes today in Oberhausen a Neofolk-festival". In addition to the usual criticisms of VAWS, it quotes a university professor who says Eis und Licht "tries to open the neofolk and darkwave scenes for right-wing thoughts". And of course that Ästhetische Mobilmachung book is basically an attack piece like this expanded to book length. I don't agree with most of these attacks, but it's a big part of contemporary German cultural debate, so I think we should cover it here. --Delirium 17:34, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've wondered about this before, regarding Eis & Licht. I can only assume that the label is attacked so much because it is a German label. I would say that the label is actually one of the most uncontroversial labels dealing in that sort of music, even in Germany, making such reports all the more funny. :bloodofox: 18:05, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Misguided Critics?

message: I checked the links in this article and found a little term problem. In the english wikipedia, neoclassical means neoclassicistic... but that's wrong. There is a difference between these genres. Neoclassical is an outgrowth of the music of Dead Can Dance and In The Nursery in the late '80s. It's modern classical... or freestyle classical. That's not the same like neoclassicism... --Menorrhea 02:31, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the terms are overloaded.  In neofolk/martial/industrial/etc. circles, "neoclassical" usually means music that uses instrumentation typical of classical music (violins, pianos, etc.), and is broadly neoclassicist in terms of subject matter and style (atmospheric; themes of past glory; album covers are often ancient ruins; etc.).  Groups like Arditi, A Challenge of Honour, etc. are frequently described as "neoclassical" in reviews and interviews.  So basically I think we should clarify this at neoclassical, to make clear that the term means different things to different subcultures. --Delirium 00:40, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Generally when someone refers to "Neoclassical" in the subculture, they're actually refering to Neoclassical (Darkwave). I tried having this discussion with editors on the Martial Industrial page, and although these individuals actually knew nothing of the genre, kept on deleting my edits. Big difference between Neoclassical and Neoclassical Darkwave.JanderVK (talk) 16:35, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neoclassical vs. Neoclassicistic 

message: Tunng seems to be a neofolk band by listening to them. - viz bullets. It meets the definition (apart from they sing in English, they do not flirt with NAZI imagery - oh but wait a minute those aren't criteria for neo-folk) can we add them??  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.231.178.239 (talk) 02:38, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Anything added should have a clear and reliable source.--SabreBD (talk) 06:30, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Tunng neofolk

message: "Occultism"? Reading about Neofolk, I can't see much commonality with the 1960s Folk movement at all. I can't understand why this label would be applied to this style of music. Folk had to do with acoustic instrumentation, traditional folk tunes and songs with political themes. Is there any of these elements in Neofolk? 64.134.71.74 (talk) 19:58, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Folk vs. NeoFolk 

message: I would not consider some of the "notable artists" listed here to be part of the neofolk genre. Artists like Shana Cleveland, Emily Jane White, Woodkid and others lack many of the stylistic and thematic hallmarks of the genre, namely distinct influence from and/or association with Death in June, common neofolk themes and motifs  (things like European heritage, paganism, runes, esotericism/magic, native folklore, Nietzsche, Evola , traditionalism etc.) and who just bear no association with the neofolk scene in general. I followed up on the sources which were used to identify these artists and neofolk, and they mainly seem to be reviews which refer to their style as "neo-folk", rather than the correct unhyphenated name of the genre to which this article pertains. I believe it is probable that critics more or less ignorant of the rather underground neofolk scene referred to these artists as "neo-folk" in the sense that they play music that could be considered to be influenced by "folk" (especially in the Bob Dylan sense rather than the traditional European sense) in the present day, hence "neo-folk", rather than suggesting they actually belong to the true neofolk genre.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 51.37.234.10 (talk) 16:33, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Conflation of of "neo-folk" with Neofolk 

message: The link in the list of "notable artists" redirects to the Nazi organization rather than to an article about a (group of) musician(s), so it should be removed or changed. 
As I couldn't find an article about the artist(s) to which I could link and I'm no expert on neofolk, I wanted to leave that to somebody more qualified. However, the fact that there is no article (yet), leaves me with the impression, that "Strength Through Joy" should maybe be removed from the list of "notable artists"? 
79.220.233.187 (talk) 09:07, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, good catch. I went through the rest of the artists listed in that section and found that Scivias is also in that category: a link to an article that isn't about a music group, where we seem to have no article on the music group. I've removed both Scivias and Strength Through Joy from this section as a result. The section could still use cutting down I think, to be a shorter list of reasonably canonical neofolk groups, not just a listing of every band that has a Wikipedia article and has at one time or another been described as "neofolk" (a genre category might be a better fit for that). --Delirium (talk) 13:31, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Strength Through Joy