The American folk music revival was a phenomenon in the United States that began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. Its roots went earlier, and performers like Josh White, Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Richard Dyer-Bennett, Oscar Brand, Jean Ritchie, John Jacob Niles, Susan Reed,and Cisco Houston had enjoyed a limited general popularity in the 1930s and 1940s. The revival brought forward musical styles that had, in earlier times, contributed to the development of country & western, jazz, and rock and roll music.

A roots revival (folk revival) is a trend which includes young performers popularizing the traditional musical styles of their ancestors. Often, roots revivals include an addition of newly-composed songs with socially and politically aware lyrics, as well as a general modernization of the folk sound.

After an American folk music revival in the 1950s, a wave of roots revival swept the world in the 1960s and 70s. In most cases, the folk music being revived was not quite extinct, though some hadn't been played for years or was moribund; such cases include the Celtic music of Cornwall and the Isle of Man, for example. In other cases, such as Cameroon and the Dominican Republic, no revival was necessary as the music remained common, and was merely popularized and adapted for mainstream audiences at home and abroad.

The term roots revival is vague, and may not always refer to identical events. Characteristics associated with a roots revival include:

With such a vague and variable definition, roots revival could be seen as referring to the creation of any kind of pop music industry, though there are countries with well-developed pop traditions that have not had a period referred to as a roots revival (such as Jamaica, India, Cuba and Kenya). For example, homogenized pop has long had its fans in most every country in the world, but many of these nations have created their own indigenous pop styles out of folk music; this process could be called a roots revival, though in some cases the folk musics in question were still widespread and did not need to be revived.

American folk music is a musical term that encompasses numerous genres, many of which are known as traditional music or roots music. Roots music is a broad category of music including bluegrass, country music, gospel, old time music, jug bands, Appalachian folk, blues, Cajun and Native American music. The music is considered American either because it is native to the United States or because it developed there, out of foreign origins, to such a degree that it struck musicologists as something distinctly new. It is considered "roots music" because it served as the basis of music later developed in the United States, including rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and jazz.

Many roots musicians do not consider themselves to be folk musicians; the main difference between the American folk music revival and American "roots music" is that roots music seems to cover a slightly broader range, including blues and country .

Roots music developed its most expressive and varied forms in the first three decades of the 20th century. The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl were extremely important in disseminating these musical styles to the rest of the country, as Delta blues masters, itinerant honky tonk singers, and Latino and Cajun musicians spread to cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. The growth of the recording industry in the same period was also important; higher potential profits from music placed pressure on artists, songwriters, and label executives to replicate previous hit songs. This meant that musical fads, such as Hawaiian slack-key guitar, never died out completely, since a broad range of rhythms, instruments, and vocal stylings were incorporated into disparate popular genres.

Jean Ritchie (born December 8, 1922) is an American folk music singer, songwriter, and Appalachian dulcimer player.

Abigail and Balis Ritchie of Viper, Kentucky had 14 children, and Jean was the youngest. Ten girls slept in one room of the farming family's house in the Cumberland Mountains.

Jean Ritchie quickly memorized songs and performed at local dances and the country fair in Hazard. In the late 1940s the family acquired a radio and discovered that what they were singing was hillbilly music, a word they had never heard before. In the mid-thirties Alan Lomax recorded in Kentucky for the Library of Congress's Archive of Folk Song. Among the people he recorded were The Singing Ritchies.^{[dubious – discuss]}

Ritchie attended Cumberland College (Now the University of the Cumberlands) in Williamsburg, Kentucky and later the University of Kentucky in Lexington. At college she joined the glee club and choir and learned to play piano. In 1946 she graduated with a BA in social work. During the war, she taught in elementary school.

Ed McCurdy (January 11, 1919 – March 23, 2000) was an American folk singer, songwriter, and television actor. His anti-war classic, "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream" (1950), inspired and gave hope to those in the peace movement.

Born to a farming family in Willow Hill, Pennsylvania, McCurdy left home at 18 to pursue a singing career. He first found success in 1938 as a singer and disc jockey at a gospel radio station in Oklahoma. By the early 1940s, McCurdy, tall and handsome and with a big baritone voice, had become a popular singer of romantic songs in nightclubs across North America, until the legendary vaudeville fan dancer Sally Rand caught his act, hired him to join her show, put him in a tuxedo and had him sing his romantic songs to her on stage while pushing her on her swing. He stayed in vaudeville for several years as a singer and straight man to comedian (Fat) Jack E. Leonard, before moving in 1948, with his Canadian dancer wife and family to Vancouver where he hosted his own radio show for CBC Radio. With the success of this show, the CBC transferred him to the flagship national station in Toronto where he starred in a morning children's show and an adult evening show. During his Canadian radio period, he developed life-time friendships with the guests on his show, such as Pete Seeger, Lena Horne, Josh White, Oscar Peterson, and Oscar Brand. He also developed a love for folk music and released his first folk album in 1949.