Folk music should rightfully be a vehicle for bringing people together in harmony. There are tribal divisions in folk music and the "us" and "them" are exacerbated by
those who have a "dog in that hunt". There are those who want folk music to be their private little sinecure and exclude "outsiders".
There are those like the BNP or some factions of the bluegrass scene who use the music to further their political and ethnic prejudices.
Then there are folk snobs. (Oh yes there are!)

Music ideally is the language of healing as Tommy Sands says so beautifully in his song. There are those who have been at the forefront of this ideal such as Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Judy Collins and others who are lesser known. I think Jerry that this is what has connected us to folk music, that it is the music of the human condition, that we can accept emotionally, psychologically and in other ways. It's about people and those who really get it have a reverence for human life.

Frank Hamilton

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