A few years before I got interested in folk music, I took some singing lessons. I knew a couple of really good singers in high school and a couple of friends were heavily into opera. I listened to a batch of it, got a clue as to what was going on, and I still love it.

But a few years later, I discovered folk songs and ballads, and that's what I really wanted to sing.

My singing voice is not operatic. But it's fairly smooth, I sing on pitch, and I make sure my audiences can hear the words. I've always felt that my role—to borrow from Richard Dyer-Bennet*—is that of a modern day minstrel rather than that of a folk singer. I was born and raised in a city, my parents were both health professionals, I've never lived up in the hills, on a farm, or in a rural area, and I learned most of my songs, not from my toothless grandmother, but from song books, records, and other singers.

In addition, since I sing a wide variety of songs, I use a classic guitar, which is versatile enough to accompany anything from six-hundred year old ballads and songs to modern songs (even though I once had someone tell me "You can't play folk music on nylon strings!"). And I took a batch of classic guitar lessons. Also, the clothing I wear when I perform is appropriate to the venue, i.e., when I do a concert in a regular concert hall, I wear a dark suit and tie, and in a coffee house, I am more casually dressed in shirt (often a cotton turtle neck) and slacks.

I don't dress down because I sing folk songs.

I have had snide shots taken at me by occasional folk singers who take on the role of a "folk" to reflect the fact that they sing folk songs, even though their background is just as urban as mine is, and almost seem to be trying to hide the fact. They seem to think that one should not sing folk songs unless one wears scuzzy clothes, does one's darnedest to roughen up their voice, mush-mouth the words and both talk and sing in a phony dialect, and generally sound like they just rode into town with a wagonload of turnips. And a couple of them have felt it incumbent upon them to look down their noses at me because I don't.

Now, I got a real snort out of the New Lost City Ramblers when I saw them years ago. They did old-timey country string band music and songs, and on stage they wore plaid shirts and bib overalls, and clowned around a lot. But in addition to being darned good, they presented themselves as an act. They weren't trying to convince anyone that they were anything but three city boys who were performing country music.

I've found the all-too-frequent "folky snob" just as snobbish as the classical music buff who looks down his nose at folk music in general and admonishes me for wasting my time and talent with something so "trivial."

Don Firth

*I don't imitate Dyer-Bennet. In fact, I couldn't. He is a light tenor and I am a bass-baritone, and I take issue sometimes with the way he does certain songs. I do, however, try to emulate his approach (as a professional, a minstrel) to the music.