A lyric song intended to be sung in recital, usually accompanied by a piano.
A song belonging to the folk music of a people or area, often existing in several versions or with regional variations, a song composed in the style of traditional folk music.
National song.
A national song is the national patriotic song of a country, ideally sung chorally by its citizens.
Popular song.
Historically, any non-folk-music form that acquired mass popularity-from the songs of the medieval minstrels to those elements of fine art music originally intended for a small, elite audience but that became widely popular. After the Industrial Revolution, true folk music began to disappear, and the popular music of the Victorian era and the early 20th cent. Was that of the music hall and vaudeville, with its upper reaches dominated by waltz music and the operettas of J. Offenbach, V. Herbert, and others. In the U.S., minstrel shows performed the compositions of such songwriters as S. Foster. In the 1890s Tin Pan Alley emerged, and later the musical, which achieved great sophistication. Beginning with ragtime in the 1890s, black Americans had begun combining complex African rhythms with European harmonic structures, a synthesis that would eventually create jazz. The music audience greatly expanded, partly because of technology. By 1930, phonograph records had replaced sheet music as the chief source of music in the home, enabling those without musical training to hear popular songs. The microphone relieved singers of the need for trained voices that could fill large halls. The ability of radio broadcasting to reach rural communities aided the dissemination of new styles, notably country music, and to a lesser extent blues. By the 1950s, the migration of Amer. blacks to cities in the North had resulted in the cross-fertilization of elements of blues with the uptempo rhythms of jazz to create rhythm and blues. Rock and roll, with such figures as E.
