folks, please don't misunderstand (not that I think you have). I am not trying to promote "purity" in folk music. I like it when people try new things, stretch the boundaries, etc. Right now I'm crazy about a Hungarian singer named Marta Sebesteyen whose band, called Muzikas, includes synthesizers of all things. I just don't get it when people take bits and pieces of a culture and hang them on the walls of their lives like bad paintings. Rastelnikov is probably right about the intrusion of mainstream culture, just as happened to the hippies and the beatniks before them. But I will say that radical, self-righteous "new-agers" are not continuing any tradition that I've ever seen. They are just dressing themselves in the parts that look sexy at the time and twisting the rest. Shula,I loved the zen story. I think you were saying what I was saying, but maybe you weren't. What would be the sound of one boot clogging?

thanks for replying, Chet w.