You pretty much covered it in your first post, Azizi. Why would black people be drawn to folk music when almost nothing in their contemporary experience (which is based on the commercial media mainstream) would point them there?

When we white folkies were youngsters in the late 50's and early 60's, folk WAS mainstream...but that was a situation that only lasted about 10 years at most. Folk was soon displaced by folk-rock, rock, pop rock, acid-rock, progressive rock, glam-rock, disco, punk rock, new wave, techno, new country, and so on, and so on, and lately we see the rise of rap and hiphop music as well. All the most recent popular styles seem to be characterized by a huge amount of pounding bass and rythm section...(which I happen to just detest!). You want to totally ruin a piece of music? Triple the amount of bass in it. That's my opinion. ;-) Ah well, I'm just not in touch with the modern sound...

What in the world would cause a contemporary North American black person who grew up in the 80's or 90's to gravitate toward folk music? Nothing I can think of...