You folks are kind of ignoring the obvious.

In our area, musicians tend to drink. In low resource areas (Appalchia and inner cities) alcohol isn't a nice, social lubricant. It's a hard vice; absorbing needed family resources; disabling the drinker for labor or professional work; associated with violence and dangerous accident. Drunks are too often poor, abusive and nasty.

The mountains offer a pretty good life for hard-working people, but it is a harsh environment for idlers. Musicians tend to be idlers.

With our school training that association isn't causation, we tend to challenge the notion that playing music or singing causes any of these vices. The folks around here aren't so analytical. A few drunken fights, broken families, financial hardship and they go ahead and make the generalization that music is not all that great as part of a productive life.

A little piano, that's genteel. A few hymns, that's a joyful noise unto the Lord. Fiddle and banjo, that's possible bad news for the player's wife and kids.

Pretty simple.