NOW: Charlottesville, VA. Very college town, birthplace of the Dave Matthews Band (OK, not folk, but it is still music), not enough folk around for my taste but lots of folksy people. Fridays throughout the summer months we have a live outdoor concert at an amphitheater at one end of a large pedestrian mall - lots of alternative lifestyles in evidence, tie-dye and beards there, even though the music ranges from swing to pop through Baaba Seth. Lots of places to go hear music if you don't want to hear anything else for a while... not so many of the coffee-house style I got used to in college, when I was in the Boston area. There are three of us 'catters here, since I still count Alan C even though he's in WVa most of the time...

HOME-town = Abidjan, Ivory Coast, (ex-)French West Africa. I like a lot of African music now, I wish I had when I still lived there. One of my favorites is Daouda Kone, from upcountry somewhere, because he sings songs that remind me of Irish music, not the music of course, but he mentions neighborhoods and areas a lot, and sings about kind of normal "situations" like the boss' wife wanting to sleep with him and so on. Irish songs almost inevitably have some geographical reference, so that people listening can have a good "visual" - and Daouda Kone does that a lot. Plus he sings in regular French, African French, and in various African languages.