Newfoundland Folk Music

Newfoundland folk music is the traditional music of Newfoundland and Labrador, formed from Irish, English, Scottish and French sources carried to the island's fishing outports and preserved there in relative isolation. Its repertory centres on narrative ballads, sea songs, local compositions about fishing, sealing and shipwreck, and dance tunes for fiddle and button accordion played at kitchen parties and community dances. Singers perform largely unaccompanied or with sparse backing, in local dialects, and the tradition supplied the foundation for the province's 1970s folk revival and its trad-rock bands.