Hi Rick,

I guess my album is doing OK. Thanks for asking. How's yours doin'? I think in the case of folk music type albums, it takes time to find a market. All I can tell you is that I'm happy with what came out and I feel it represents me. I think that if we just hang in there, we'll find our audience, don't you?

I agree with you that folkies have been forgiving about lyric quality and content. I think this is true about much singer/songwriter material. But this has always been true. There were great pop songs from past eras and for every great one, there were forgettable ones.

Would this protest singer from the thirties that you mention be Aunt Molly Jackson or Florence Reese?

"Come all of you good workers, The truth to you I'll tell, Of how the good old union Came in here to dwell.

Which side are you on? Which side are you on?

Don't listen to the bosses, Don't listen to their lies, Us workin' men don't have a chance, Unless we organize!

Which side are you on?"

This mighn't pass muster in an academic poetry class but it's pretty dynamic folk poetry IMHO. It's specific, real, simple and hard-hitting.

Union was a big issue in the days when coal miners were being shot at by strike-breakers and gun thugs hired by the mining companies. Nowadays, when a union is mentioned, one tends to think in terms of Jimmy Hoffa. Today's songwriters might tend to hide themselves behind a plethora of metaphors and waxeth philosophical or exhortative. Don't know how this plays in poetry classe taught by serious poets.

You are right that much folk music is divisive. Some racially insulting. I think, though, if you do take an academic stance in folklore or musicology, there might be a good case for determining that rap is a folk musical style based on musical tradition found in the black community.

Now the question remains, does that mean that "rap" songs are folk songs? This might be another issue. But IMHO they have a promising candidacy to become them in time.

Frank Hamilton