What in the world is folk music? And where are these folk clubs anyway?

And how "warmly" would Black people who came to these "clubs" be accepted?

Hmmm.

You're right. It depends on where these clubs are.

I think that if Black folks think about folk music at all, they {we}consider this music as something foreign to us. "Foreign" here means not a part of their {our} experiences.

If you consider Blues and early Jazz as part of folk music, as I do-I thinkk that most Black Americans consider this music to be old timey. And while we like some "oldies but goodies", we think that this 'roots' music is too slow, too lacking in bass and percussion, too sad, and/or too filled with minstrel lyrics that harken back to slavery times {we got it bad and that aint good}.

A lot of church going Black people didn't grow up hearing this music. And since early blues and early jazz isn't on the radio and Black Entertainment Television has sold its soul to ...whomever..and since even before that was more into programming that was made eith the view that "a mind is a terrible thing-so let's waste it", there is not now nor has there ever been any mainstream programming that showcases this music. So how are we supposed to know it? We have to work to find it, and it's soo much easier to just go with the latest flow...

And that's another thing-when Black folks' folk music-blues and early jazz-become divorced from its dance traditions, those musical genres began to lose their Black audiences. When these musical genres became "for listeners only", we {Black people} moved on to music that we could move to.

In my opinion, we African Americans are very culturally innovative people. But once we have created something, we drop the old form and move on to the new one. This happens in music, and dance, and slang, and other cultural indices. Being innovative is good, but we care too little about the past.

That said, the world seems to be turning faster or something 'cause when I listen to uptempo music from the 1960s some of it seems too slow. Something's missing...Maybe I've gotten use to the steady bass percussive sounds of the 1980s and 1990s. I don't know what it is. But if even the fast 1960s music sounds too slow to my past middle age ears, then you know that the music of the 1950s and 1940s is gonna be too dry for me. And if this is the case for me, what about the young folks who grew up on hip-hop music?

None of this may be germane to the question at hand, since in my opinion, I think most Black people have bought the mainstream meme that "folk music" is the Peter, Paul, and Mary type songs. And besides White folks singing these songs during the 1960s Civil Rights protest era, I think its the dominant view of Black Americans} that that music don't have nothin to do with us Black folks.

So, all this to say, Guest Huey, I don't know what the answer is to your question. There're probably are alot of answers. I'll be interested in 'hearing' what other folks think about this.