Henry Ford was out to destroy any semblance of ethnicity from immigrants to America.
He was an avid collector of fiddle music from the Northeast.

Lloyd and McColl were different in that they were concerned that a working-class music would be destroyed by a kind of musical imperialism, that which would overtake the less commercial and folk-based music not for profit.

I see them as different from Ford. Lloyd and McColl were far less Wagnerian in their wanting to recreate a legendary folklore based on racial and cultural supremacy as did Ford.

Many people, including myself, got interested in folk music through Left-wing people. At the time of the early Fifties, these were the only folks who gave a damn about folk music in general. By that time, Ford's views about preserving folk-based music was considered to be kooky curiosities.

The rise of the Folk Revival and folklore scholarship rests with the advent of the Left-wing movement and the Popular Front. There were those such as Lunsford who were interested in the folk music of the area in which he lived but he was not that influential in calling attention to folk music internationally as was Lloyd, MacColl, Seeger and folk scholars such as Archie Green, Kenneth Goldstein and others who came out of the Left.

Not all of these folks were active or ideological Marxists or even communists. Some drifted in and out of the CP as did many people during the Forties and early Fifties before it became a purge by power hungry politicians such as McCarthy. Many, including myself, had questions as to the consistency and integrity of the beliefs of many in the Party or outside and of some who professed to be Marxists.

In summary, not all can be painted with the same brush. Not all were rabid evangelists.
They were people of their time and the interest in folk music had to do with a rise of class-consciousness that was inherited from the Thirties.

Back to the topic, to limit folk music to bars, pubs, homes, or any particular environment is to rob it of its universal appeal. To keep it out of print because of some peculiar notion that it would be contaminated doesn't make sense.

It doesn't matter what we say about folk music. It will survive because it answers a basic cultural need. At times it's Lomax's "security blanket". It is accessible and that is its social beauty. You can sing it in groups, dance to it and it doesn't rely on manufactured media-driven musical drivel from the marketplace. You can also sing it privately without someone telling you that you are doing it wrong.

Frank Hamilton