Ruthie:

Ever since radio and records were invented in the 1920s, the music industry has been trying to sell us music. One of the ways they market it, like almost everything else, is to make last year's product obsolete. So, we need a new crop of "stars" every year (or more often) and a new genre of music every few years.

Folk music was marketed to us in the late fifties and early sixties and very successfully. Now it's considered obsolete. This is true of big band music, rock and roll, etc. They were all marketed to us at differnt times and then they went away.

The trouble with folk music is it won't go away because it's the only form of music that regular folks can make by themselves. We don't need the music industry and they don't need us.

So, among the thirteen-year-old population, anything that's not on the cutting edge (that is, being marketed at this moment) is not cool. This is true among most other age populations, too. That's why you see so many SUVs on the road. So, don't worry about being cool. It's not important now and it won't be important to you later in life unless you let it be.

By the way, we earn a living playing folk music in schools and very often we hear kids say that folk music is not cool and they don't like it. After they've heard it, their opinion usually changes. So, we think that most of what you're hearing is due to ignorance of what folk music is.

Keep on ranting!

Bev and Jerry