Well, that's an interesting passage Peace posted there - but it'd be more interesting with an indication of where it comes from.

One of the bad things that happens to people in the modern world is the way they get brought up cut off from the past, and from the culture of their predecessors, and from knowledge of the predecessors of other people around them. That is something that has probably particularly affected people from the Black diaspora in the USA and the Caribbean, but it is also something that has happened to white English people. (In fact in England today it is the English traditions that tend to get the least attention and respect.)

One of the ways in which folk music and people who are passionate about it differ from society as a whole is the way we stand out against that, even going to the other extreme. We can be even too preoccupied with history, as a kind of reaction.

"Folk" isn't just about music, it's about knowing where we come from, and where other people come from, and that's every bit as important for people of all ethnic groups. There is some sense when people try tom relace the term "folk" with "roots".

The great thing about people, though, is that even when we are cut off from our roots, we are capable of reinventing a musical culture which we make for ourselves. And that is something that has been especially characteristic of people in the Black diaspora, as Azizi has emphasised.