Dicho, you're now getting to it. Great post Art BTW...

Sandy wrote to me the other day about a new book by a Berea College professor, asking if I'd known him, and indeed I had. Richard Drake was a history prof at Berea (noe emeritus) and has written a history of Appalachian. In talking to Sandy about him, I remembered (and his book seems to reflect the same thing) that history must be seen through as many "lenses" as possible and that many well known books simply approach history from a particular angle. Most are told in terms of politics and wars and economies, but Drake felt that the many aspects of sociological history, such as folklore or geography for instance, could not be ignored as they often were as equally compelling as anything else.

We've had many talks here about "history and Hollywood" and frankly you can't learn history there at all....nor can you learn it through folk music. Equally, you cannot learn it through many oft quoted texts because, in the final analysis, all history is philosophy.

A folk song contemporary to it's time provides two things. It gives us an additional "lens" and from it we may spark an interest in a thing which leads us to better research and hence, better history. Were it not for the songs, there is much we would never hear about or know about many years later. We cannot accept them as fact as they are simply a view, but an important one. Same as Hollywood, if they trigger further investigation or enhance the awareness.......well friends, that ain't all bad.

Spaw