What a phony proposition.    To be fair to NPR, this should be mentioned:

"Folk Alley recently spent eight weeks polling its listeners in search of a master list of "The 100 Most Essential Folk Songs." The results — found here in the form of a printable list and a continuous music mix, streamed in no particular order — are fodder for debate, discussion and discovery.

What are your favorite folk songs? Head over to the Folk Alley site and join the discussion. To get you started, here's the master list...".


So it is a popularity poll, even if a badly ungrammatical one.

I can see no way in which the word "essential" applies to 90% of the choices, especially without any constraint as to what purpose the song is said to be "essential", or in what sense.

It is certainly the case that only a few of them capture the essence of even Western Anglo folk music. A moment's reflection as to why "Frankie and Johnny", "The Unreconstructed Rebel", "The Rising of the Moon", "The Auld Orange Flute", "My Love is Like a Red Red Rose", or "Pick a Bale of Cotton" or "Trouble in Mind" or "Empty Bed Blues"...well, my point makes itself. This is an exercise in jejeune and specious PR. LEt alone Spanish, French, SOuth African, Italian, or Russian songs, for examples of glaring omissions, to just name a few.


A