Exactly Seamus!

Whenever one side dominates you tend to loose the other bringing both sides together even though one might be smaller still increases potential market.

Additionally when there is inclusion or balance we chip away at the branding that makes people see the folk world as being on one side or the other....

Yes Ron- one can have workshops, concerts with themes, politics in music and lyrics fantastic. However, when I know that going to a concert will most likely produce an artist droning on about the war, the economy, the hudson river whatever more than they talk about the songs, history of songs, history of lyrics, origins of songs then I am not feeling so much as if I am at a concert.

I already noted both somthers and seeger did some good things and played wrote and included a wide range over time however, they did succeed in branding an entire generation of people who simply started out liking the sound of ordinary everyday folk music and its qualities as music and verse.

As the Seeger documentary pointed out Pete knew the power of folk music and he put it to work- for one side --at the expense of the intellectual contributions to music of the other side - don't know- would be interesting to find out.

And I will repeat- the seeger smothers party turned out to be on the winning side. I agree with much that they pursued. I am thankful that Seeger saw the light (as I recall when he learned about the deeds of Stalin).

I was struck by the crowd at a workshop at Glen Echo Washington Folk Festival last summer. Seeger and contemporaries music featured. Almost all the same generation- ageing folkies about 50-60.

My theory -
1. population changes in attitude. When a genre of music is branded as one place on the political spectrum and the center of the population changes (in our case to the right as hippies became busismen, lawyers....and Reagan built up conservative patriotism...)
growth of followers will slow.

2.As music moves from live performance to recordings to market it is purchased by the generation with funds at the time. In America at least generational sharing is minimal and with time the age set market is broken off from future generations therefore the next generation does not follow.

The trick is to get folk music to thread through the gears not get wrapped around them. If you want folkmusic growth to continue through time you have to get it like film through the rollers of a projector.
When wrapped up in one issue or point of view it gets derailed.

Additionally when we transform music we sing into music that is marketed and that we purchase we likewise get stuck. It just rolls around and around in its little side niche eventually hitting the bargain basement with hope of only some wondrous reclamation or revival.

If we keep singing the songs, telling the tales as a lifeway while at the same time recording and marketing them there seems to me to be more of an opportunity to grow. The more timeless music - that of daily life, and good word play and rhyme and catchy tunes seem to be the glue that should be exploited to hold things together and not so much the political issues that get dated, become less relevant and need more time to explain to be understood.

Again seeger with his interest in collecting and documenting did much fine work in this area too.

Conrad