Television has killed a lot more than folk music. It's killed a lot of brain cells too, and annihilated a vast amount of human culture and ancient wisdom.

But what really killed folk music was the music business itself. They discovered that they could make BIG BUCKS with it in the late 50's, and proceeded to milk it dry, commercialize it to death with plastic folk groups, and overexpose it till there was nothing left to milk.

That is exactly why Dylan moved on. He just realized sooner than most that the folk scene (on a large scale, that is) was dying, turning into stale cliche and repetition, and could not be sustained. Most of the other folksingers realized it some time later. Some never caught on.

It is the latter group who castigate Dylan for recognizing what they could not.

Dylan is still a person with a tremendous sense of the folk tradition, as he has demonstrated again and again. Check out his 2 folk albums from the early 90's and read the liner notes on "World Gone Wrong".

Or ask Rick Fielding.

Folk is not truly dead, of course. For those who love it, folk will never die, and there will always be such people, but as a mainstream radio and TV musical thing it is finished, just like disco, rock 'n roll, old country, new wave, progressive rock, and any number of other fads that the MUSIC INDUSTRY has exploited to death and then abandoned. (I like folk better than those others, but they have all suffered much the same fate at the hands of commerce.)

The Music Business killed folk. They kill everything they touch...after making a killing on it first.

- LH