The last couple of folk festivals I went to were very well attended. But if you wanted to hear traditional music, you had to make your way up into meeting rooms in the extreme northwest corner of the Seattle Center grounds. Everywhere else, it sounded like more like a rock festival. When I first went onto the grounds, the first thing to hit my ears was "Duke, duke, duke, Duke of Earl, Earl, Earl—" and I wondered if I'd come to the right place. Yeah, it was well attended all right, but I'm not sure all these people were there to hear folk music, however you want to define it.

I have to agree with Dick Greenhaus (21 Feb 08 - 05:12 p.m. and 25 Feb 08 - 06:34 p.m.).

Among "folkies," Richard Dyer-Bennet was not everyone's cup of tea, but then he wasn't targeting his performances for folkie audiences. Although some folkies understood and appreciated what he was doing, his main appeal was to general audiences, particularly classical music audiences, and especially those who were into early music. Patterning himself after Swedish minstrel Sven Scholander, he never referred to himself as a "folk singer." He considered himself to be a minstrel, continuing a tradition that dates back more than a millennium. Different countries had different words for this kind of traveling self-accompanied singer:   trouvere in southern France, troubadour in northern France, minnesinger in Germany, skald in the Scandinavian countries, bard in Wales. . . .

In that a minstrel was a professional musician, i.e., he made his living by being paid to sing, it behooved him to have a repertoire of songs that were interesting to his audiences, and to be able to sing them and accompany them well. With that in mind, Dyer-Bennet makes the following point:

"No song is ever harmed by being articulated clearly, on pitch, with sufficient control of phrase and dynamics to make the most of the poetry and melody, and with an instrumental accompaniment designed to enrich the whole effect."

I maintain that if a person is going to appear in front of a paying audience, or even one that isn't paying but is investing their time, that person has taken on a certain obligation to that audience. Not only do you owe it to the audience, you owe it to the music—and to yourself.

Don Firth

P. S. Am I being sufficiently critical?