Frogprince - I see. So how long has this brouhaha (with Conrad) been going on? It seems like a big waste of energy to me.


Conrad - You are quite correct that the folk music movement was a movement against the music of our parents (Sinatra, Big Band, Tin Pan Alley, etc), and that it contained the various other protest aspects you mention...hostility to urbanization...affection for old country ways of living...and so on...

It wasn't that folk music caused all that, but rather that folk music was tailor-made to express varous forms of restlessness and rebellion of the time, that's all, and young people were after all resisting the values of their elders. Very plainly.

I detested Sinatra, Big Band music, and Tin Pan Alley. I also detested the USA's imperial wars. I would have done so regardless of whether there was a folk music movement or not, but folk music certainly helped to bring together people who felt as I did at the time, and it strengthened those feelings in people.

It seems to have been a natural evolution of society at that time.

Now, Bob Dylan, for one, started out fully embracing the leftist radical sort of ethic of the folk music movement, and was deeply in it through the period of his first 3 albums...but he soon began to become uncomfortable with it, because he instinctively resisted the idea of becoming "the spokesman" of anyone's political agenda. So he stepped away from it beginning around 1964-5, started writing more personally oriented material, and that really upset his audience who looked upon his departure from the overtly political music as a betrayal.

They were mistaken. He didn't want to be used as other people's poster boy, that's all. And I think he had begun to feel that people who set out to "change the world" are largely caught up in their own ego enhancement and are usually fooling themselves. I would say that that is the case...in many cases....but not in all. There are some people who devote their lives to political action in a very real way, and are not fooling themselves. In other words, they're doing it for the right reasons. Most people do it just for the big rush of hearing themselves talk, in my opinion, but a few people do it because they genuinely have real compassion for humanity and are willing to put themselves on the line for others. Joan Baez is one such person, in my opinion.

Dylan's concern seems to have been primarily to express himself in a way that spontaneously made sense to him and fulfilled him. I can't argue with that. He's not a crusader, he's a writer. He often writes great material that will inspire many, and that's his job, but it's not his job to man the barricades. If you want someone to man the barricades, look to Joan Baez. She'll do it.

There's nothing unusual about the fact that modern folk music has an aging audience which is growing smaller. The same is true of Sinatra's music, Big Band music, oldtime country music, rock n' roll, and every other form of popular music we've ever seen.

It happens. Things change. Old styles fade out and new styles come along. Don't worry about it. It will cease entirely to be a problem for you and me and everyone else here on the day that each one of us dies....and the world will continue merrily on and produce new musical styles, and the same things will happen all over again.