That was a good rundown of a number of the "folk" stereotypes that may come into people's minds when they think of folk music, Ron Olesko. Well said.

Of the ones you mentioned, I favor the last three more...

1. Kumbayah music?   Bores me.

2. Tom Dooley grandparent music? Also bores me.

3. Singer-songwhiners? Yeah! That's the aspect I most relate to in what I term "folk music". It all basically came from Bob Dylan, but before him it came from Woody Guthrie and a few others. To me it was people like: Dylan, Jackson Browne, Baez (in her later career), Buffy Sainte-Marie, Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, Jackson Browne, Van Morrison, Al Stewart...THAT was the folk music that really turned me on. The songs can be about ANYTHING...certainly not restricted "people crying in their beer".

4. History teachers? Yeah! You betcha. The Trad stuff is great for developing a keener sense of history and culture, and most of the better singer-songwriters have a way of building on that and harkening back to it in various ways, while Al Stewart, for one, has built up a repertoire of historical songs that are pretty amazing.

5. (so-called) "bomb throwing radicals"? Yeah! ;-) Heh! I value the fact that folk musicians have had the imagination and the guts to challenge the ruling forces in society (which are huge financial interests and military industries), that they have traditionally taken the side of the poor, the disenfranchised, the powerless, that they have tirelessly opposed fascism in all its guises...You betcha! It's a vital part of the folk tradition.

Folk music is for the revolution and it is against all tyrannical rule by the privileged few who have 98% of all the money. It is the music that inspired the fight for unions, back in the early days (though unions have mostly become a corrupt power structure since). It is the music of social ferment and the voice that is raised against the Big Bosses and oppressors of the common man, whoever or wherever they may be.

Azizi - I might mention that although the folk audience was primarily middle class white people, it was that very middle class white contingent who fought passionately for integration and the establishment of racial equality in the late 50's and the 60's when the crucial battles in that fight were being fought! Joan Baez marched beside Martin Luther King at the early demonstrations and put herself in the line of danger again and again in that regard. So did Judy Collins. So did many others among the white folk musicians. Dylan wrote many of the greatest anthems protesting the terrible treatment of black people and calling for change. He has done so all his life. Without the support of that white middle class contingent (most of them from the northern "liberal" states that tend to vote Democratic in most elections), without the support of those same middle class white people who loved folk music, blacks in the Deep South would have been pretty much on their own.

If this is not remembered and appreciated anymore, then it's a damned shame.

The Folk Movement in the late 50's and the 60's had 2 great passionate political causes to fight for. One was to end the War in Vietnam and bring American soldiers home. The other was to end segregation and see that black people had dignity and equality with white people in America. That WAS the folk movement.

There were also numerous black musicians who were part of folk music at the time, and beloved to the folk audience. Among them: Odetta, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGee, and Taj Mahal, for example. They were playing to a primarily white middle class audience, and that was no problem for anybody, it was just the way it was at the time. The majority of the black music audience, as far as I know, was focused on other styles of music such as Rythm and Blues, Doo-Wop, early Motown, and that sort of thing.

Harry Belafonte's Calypso sound was certainly well liked by much of the white folk audience too, and he always had good connections with the folk musicians and the liberal poltical causes associated with that community.