Nostalgia isn't enough. It has to have relevance. Someone's idea about how things used
to be might be distorted by a Rousseau view of a projected idealization. Most of todays' folkies don't have a clue as to how the people who were hungry, war-torn, poverty stricken, striving for a better life, or struggling for basic survival felt. Today's folk audiences are removed from this. It's all about coffee-houses, nostalgia for the Sixties, growing up in little enclaves that sat in circles and sang or danced, twittered about those on the outside of the clique, seeing who could come up with a song no one else knew, wearing blue jeans, watch fobs and growing beards to emulate what they think a folksinger is like, singing blues songs with a phony African-American accent or a country twang, glomming on to personalities as if they were some kind of Paris Hilton or Tom Cruise folkies. Sighing over songs that were written to be intended as oracles. Many are really trite poorly-constructed but conveniently masked in some kind of mysticism so that anything can be read into them.

American audiences have left folk music because it has become a caricature of itself.

In the meantime, folk music survives but not so that anyone in the folkie circles would recognize it.

Frank Hamilton