I'm expressing disappointment in the mature folk music scene in regards to what I see as a lack of response to the current war on terrorism, the war in Afghanistan, and the preparations for war with Iraq. I just don't see the level of commitment once seen in the folk scene.

In the 'Folk Music on PBS' thread, I provided a link to a great website, done by Maryl Neff, of her study on the American folk music revival. It is the social activist folk music community of that era I am referring to historically, which I believe just plain doesn't exist. Rather, I think the politically active musicians in the contemporary anti-war/civil rights scene are now to be found in alt rock, alt country, and the punk scenes. But the folk scene isn't where this sort of thing is expected or found very often, with a few notable exceptions of course (like Suffet & Peoples Music above).

Here is an excerpt from Maryl's website about the Folk Scare activists:

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Social activism
According to Seeger (1972), the commercial folk boom died out, leaving behind a number of musicians who either continued to perform anyway, helped pave the way for later country stars, or moved into rock music. Folk-protest singers also came onto the scene. They merged traditional folk music with topical songs to make protest songs and were considered folk heroes of the era. Their music stressed honesty, integrity, and frankness, and the singers, who were pressured to be both politically active and socially relevant, were thrust into the hero's mold (Rodnitzky, 1976).

Certainly the most important factor behind the rise of the protest singer was the general activist climate that permeated collegiate culture in the 1960s. The quiet lethargic generation that inhabited the campuses during Eisenhower's two presidential terms suddenly came to life with a vengeance. . . In the prosperous but rootless 1960s participation was caused, in part, by the search for cultural heroes. (Rodnitzky, 1976, p. xix)

The singers not only sang to protest Vietnam, discrimination, and other issues of the day, but they traveled around the country to support these issues. For example, in 1964, Seeger, Carolyn Hester, Phil Ochs, Eric Anderson, and others joined the Mississippi Caravan of Music where they staged concerts to encourage blacks to register to vote (Eliot, 1979).

Greenwich Village was a haven for the folk protest singers. Among this group were Ochs, Bob Dylan, and Tom Paxton, along with long-established musicians like Seeger. Before 1962, Sing Out! magazine (whose predecessor was People's Songs) was the only folk music publication on the market. From about 1962 to 1972, a publication called Broadside was put out by the joint efforts of Seeger, Agnes "Sis" Cunningham, Gordon Friesen, and Gil Turner. This mimeographed publication was designed to put out the songs of the folk music movement (Eliot, 1979), and included the publication of some of Dylan's earliest material (McKeen, 1993). It also included articles about various protest movements, concerts, festivals, record reviews, and more. Phil Ochs alone contributed more than 70 songs to Broadside and numerous articles (see, e.g., Ochs, 1963; Ochs, 1965).

By the mid-1960s, the war in Vietnam was escalating and so did the protest movement (Berg, 1976). As the protest movement began to wane in the late 1960s, Ochs tried to continue in this vein. He was largely unsuccessful and even tried to become more commercial. Nothing worked. Still, according to a Rolling Stone article written in 1976 just after his tragic suicide, Ochs' second album in 1965 had "firmly established Ochs as the leading protest singer/songwriter" of the era (Flippo, 1976, p. 15). He is still remembered for his commitment to his causes and his impact on the music scene of the 1960s.

Robert Allen Zimmerman, aka Bob Dylan, was another folk-singing phenomenon who headed to Greenwich Village after dropping out of the University of Minnesota (McKeen, 1993). Dylan "confessed to being a 'Woody Guthrie Jukebox' before developing his own songwriting style and helping to launch the 60's folk revival" (Alarik, 1996, p. 36). His breakthrough came with a performance at Gerde's in 1961 that received rave reviews in The New York Times. Soon after, he signed a recording contract with a major label, Columbia (McKeen, 1993). In 1962 he moved into writing protest songs. His song, "Blowin' in the Wind," became the "unofficial anthem of the civil rights movement - and Dylan indirectly became one of its leaders" (Baggelaar & Milton, 1976, p. 114). He continued in the protest vein until 1965.

The turning point
In the mid-1960s, folk-rock - a combination of folk and rock - began to appear. It was a combination of the Beatles and Bob Dylan. In the summer of 1965, as the Vietnam War was escalating, an occurrence at the Newport Folk Festival changed the face of folk music of the era: Bob Dylan went electric and moved on (Berg, 1976). Up to this point, people had latched on to folk music as meaningful music that saved them from their alienation from the mainstream. But now many people began to see the music as another form of popular music. "[A]nd for them, the discovery of electric blues brought things full circle, leading to the revitalization of rock" (Rosenberg, 1985, p. 196).

Now rock and folk were no longer opposites. "In that sense, Newport '65 was both a beginning and an end" (Rosenberg, 1985, p. 196). It was in Newport that Pete Seeger saw his topical folk song movement fall apart (Dunaway, 1981). Now the revival, which had been split between the traditionalists and those doing their own music, was split again between those who endorsed the electric folk and those who did not. Record companies like Elektra, along with a number of musicians including the great Bob Dylan, turned to rock music (Rosenberg, 1985).

By the late 1960s, the folk-protest scene was winding down ("Concert Reviews," 1969). In the early '70s, the Vietnam War was winding down as well. The folk music that was so popular in the '60s and early '70s was no longer being heard on commercial radio, and many thought it had died out completely. But the scene continued in the 1970s and 1980s at a more grassroots level.

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