Frank speaks great sooth. The music that swelled up from the roots of the many cultures that make up the US was carried by people like him, and Muddy, and Frank Warner, and Bill Broonzy, and hundreds of banjo pickers, fiddle players, squeeze box squeezers and singers from all walks of life. The stamp of this music is that it carries a tone of versimilitude because it is sung by people who have lived it, or who live among those who lived it.

This upwelling was met in the middle by a cascade from the top of the music business down of prettified performance-oriented renditions of similar tunes and words, but with the soul carefully bleached, mangled and pressed crisp, for mass-market palatability. People like the Kingston Trio and the Limelighters were cheery, and generated enthusiasm for the genre, but they did not carry an authentic stamp from any genuine port, and showed no sign of having paid the dues of real work which underlies so much of the tradition.

THis is not to say that some of these more refined groups were not lovely to hear--they were. But Frank's point about the folk music that comes from genuine cultural roots, rather than a post-industrial haze of sweet pottage, should be taken to heart.

I recently tripped across an interesting blend by the same Seekers linked upthread, doing a song which is very genuine, very touching, and very nicely executed, but which is not from any pocket of hard-earned culture; a genuine 20th century sort of song, written long after the bushies and the swagmen had been pretty well assimilated: I am Australian. It's an interesting example of the outcome when many different cultural streams collide, clash, mingle and finally integrate to some degree.

A