I'd like to put aside any debate about "what is folk music", and share my opinions as to why I think that there so little interest among African Americans in listening to and playing examples of 19th century & early work songs (including chain gang songs, levee songs, and shanties) and 19th century "plantation" dance songs and other non-religious songs from slavery? (Which I think is what Barry meant by "slave songs").

I'm putting aside the HUGH role the music industry/mass media plays in this equation except to say that

1. Musicians/vocalists who might have been interested in playing/singing this music (if they knew about it) would likely reject doing so because IMO music making is mostly a business nowadays and those performers would likely come to the conclusion (I think the accurate conclusion) that there is no money to be made in these types of music.

Which of course begs the question why is there no money to be made with these types of music, which goes back to the music industry but also I think is a reflection on the following points:

2. Few African Americans (or other Americans) know that this music exist. It's not taught in schools, and it certainly isn't heard over the radio or television etc etc

But why don't we (African Americans) embrace these types of music and play it for ourselves and demand that it get on air play?

3. (As Marymac90 shared in her 06 Sep 08 - 01:49 PM post to this thread), most African Americans do not want to be reminded of the bad ole days of slavery. But I think it's more to it than us not wanting to think about slavery and the difficult times of the past.

I think that African Americans are much more an innovative people than a conservative people. What I mean by that is that we (African Americans) don't value and treasure our past nearly as much as we should. Instead, we put the past aside and move on to our next innovation-in music, dance, language (slang), fashion etc. Old things-or parts of old things-have value if they can be repackaged into something new. Something old (like an "old school" dance) might even be reintroduced with little or no changes, but if it doesn't fit the mood and tempo of the times (which I think has speeded up considerably from the olden days of the 1960s even), it probably won't be embraced by that generation. (Which is another point-music in the USA-not just Black music- is packaged for the young (teens and young adults) and the middle aged, and not the old.)

4. Related to point #3, I believe that music, song, and dance are still intricately tied together for African Americans (and I think most Africans and other people of the African Diaspora). If you can't dance to the music, then it's not going to have a wide audience of African Americans.

I think that's a major reason why African Americans aren't "in to" Blues and/or Jazz music (two music forms that we created). Once dance became separated from Blues and from Jazz, and they primarily became "listening music" only, most Black folks moved on to other forms of music that we created as dance music. (See my point #3 as to why Jazz "swing" dancing isn't that big of a deal among Black Americans as it is among White Americans).

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So that's a short version of my response to the questions Barry raised. I'm one year late, but I guess better late than never.