Do folk musicians have to do songs that somebody else did first? That's a hard question to answer. I like to think that there is room for new songs based on tradition. Again, I bring up one of my favorite singer/songwriters Jean Ritchie (sorry if I embarrass you, Jean) for taking the tradition she grew up with and adding to it with fine songs.

If a songwriter or singer is inspired by the folk music of the past, shouldn't they be allowed to participate in this process? Isn't that really the experience of the so-called "folk singer" of the past? What is the "true experience"? We all sing songs that we were not historically there for. This is true of the so-called real folk singers.

Isn't this just another way of lauding the "Noble Savage" for being pure and uncorrupted?
(Rousseau and Dryden revisited?) It seems to me that the vitality of folk music, (the music of working-class people, agrarian folks, those coming from a specific tradition such as African-American or ?) is about the life it brings through (here's that controversial word again) "Evolution".

Folk music has to evolve to exist in my opinion. There are some anthropologists who have a "classical" bent who want to study cultures unsullied by outside contact. Herskovitz and the Golden Bough come to mind. This in my opinion is a form of "scalp collecting". Pete, one of my heroes, maintained that a vital folk music is one in which anyone can contribute and allow it to grow.

In my opinion, (and I obviously have too many for my own good,) studying a culture and its music has a reward in which those who do their homework can participate somehow in it. I look at the Seegers for example. Also Jean Ritchie and Bess Lomax Hawes. This is what many of us "city folkies" try to do. Study and participate.

This is the light I would like to see shine more on the songs rather than whether the
lyrics are read out of a book or memorized. We are not automatons who robotically
spout lyrics and songs that are over a century old. This is bloodless academia in my opinon. We have a historical and cultural right to internalize the music of our forebears and make it our own. Whether we do this with RUS or by memory doesn't matter.

Frank Hamilton