"It's a bit more than 'two weeks' into folk for me Don - it was 4 years ago that I first turned up at a folk club, and a year later I started playing recorders and keyboards, and learning those beloved single-line melodies that English folk music, at least, is mostly, NOT all, about."

It's all relative, WAV. So you've been at it for four years, have been attending folk clubs, and for three years playing single line melodies on a recorder (now, playing two lines on one recorder—now that's virtuosity!) and hunt-and-pecking on a keyboard. Good for you!

I used to hear Alan Lomax ("American School of the Air") on the radio when I was a kid, listened to Burl Ives on the radio ("The Wayfaring Stranger") when I was a teenager, saw Susan Reed in a movie in 1948 ("Glamour Girl"—lousy movie, good singing by Susan). I started actively learning folk songs (American and British Isles) and bought my first guitar in 1952 (you do the math), and I've been at it ever since. In addition to majoring in English Literature and Music in college, I studied folk balladry (Child ballads and the compilations of other collectors, along with field recordings), from Dr. David C. Fowler (A Literary History of the Popular Ballad, Duke University Press, 1968, plus a number of books on medieval scholarship). In 1958, I was asked to do a television series on what is now the local PBS affiliate entitled "Ballads and Books," sponsored by the Seattle Public Library. This series was followed by other television appearances, concerts, "hootenannies," folk festivals, and when not thus engaged, I sang regularly in clubs and coffeehouses.

I addition to academic papers I have written in school, I have had some seventeen articles on various aspects of traditional song published in music magazines amd journals.

In my various perambulations I've met, talked with, and sometimes swapped songs with well-known performers and personalities in the folk music field, including four Seegers, Pete, Peggy, Mike, and patriarch and ethnomusicologist, Charles Seeger. I knew Sandy Paton (founder of Folk-Legacy Records) when he lived in Seattle. A long list of recording artists such as Richard Dyer-Bennet, Joan Baez, Jean Redpath, and Theodore Bikel, plus scholars in the field like the aforementioned Charles Seeger, and folklorists Archie Green and Roger Abrahams.

This is barely scratching the surface of my musical CV, but you get the idea. I have been at it for awhile and I believe I know quite a bit about folk music, it's history, and the manner in which it was and is performed. And I am most certainly not the only one here on Mudcat. There are those here whose knowledge and experience far exceeds my own.

So, WAV, you are like a relatively new convert who is trying to preach, not to the congregation, not to the choir, but you are trying to explain theology to a large number of priests, vicars, ministers, rabbis, and imams.

There is a story about a young man who wanted to know the meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything. He went to a well-known master and told him what he wanted to learn. But he explained to the master that he had already read a great deal and studied diligently.   In fact, he told the old lama that he was quite proud of how much he had learned and was on the verge of explaining it to him in detail, when the lama said, "Let us have a cup of tea first."

When the tea was made and the cups were set out, the lama pushed the pot toward the young man. The young man filled his cup. Then he pushed the pot back to the lama. The lama then took the pot and began to pour more tea into the young man's cup. It overflowed onto the table, but the lama kept pouring until it ran off the table into the lap of the young man's brand new monk's robe.

The young man leaped up from the table and said, "What are you doing, you old fool?"

The lama smiled benignly and said, "This is your first lesson, and I would have you go meditate on it."

"My first lesson? What do you mean?"

"You come to me already so full of knowledge that there is no room for you to learn anything more. Go and meditate."

Don Firth