The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #19824   Message #205079
Posted By: GUEST,hollowfox
01-Apr-00 - 10:50 AM
Thread Name: Teens. The next generation...
Subject: RE: Teens. The next generation...
When I first connected with the folk community, besides the obvious shared intrest in folk stuff, the thing that I loved the most about it was that I wasn't treated like a "little kid" by the "grown-ups". Any lack of experience or education (or schooling, a different thing entirely) was unimportant. More likely, it was a very good thing. There's nothing quite so satisfying as sharing what you know and love with someone who loves the subject, but doesn't know that bit yet. Almost wonderful is knowing that you're being treated as a colleague, an equal, by someone with a difference of, say, fifty years between your respective ages. Nobody wants to be excluded from some fun because they're a little kid, nobody wants to be excluded because they're an old geezer, either. As for wondering if there are any other young'uns (for lack of a better term) like yourselves who haunt the library for ballads, blues, Celtic harp tunes, etc., well there are others, but not many. There always have been , but not many. And a good many of us ended up on the 'Cat. (Cream of the crop, that's us.) That's one good thing about being a young'un now. Listsers, special intrest websites, etc. can connect you with like-minded folks, whereas in the pre-'net era, it was only a combination of kind fate and dumb luck that some of us ever met any other folkies (Andy Kardos, if you're out there, thanks again). Still, I hope to meet some more of you in the corporeal world.