Pardon me, Conrad, but when you start lecturing me on music, my eyes tend to glaze over.

I've been studying music all my life. I spent some three years at the University of Washington School of Music and another two years at the Cornish College of the Arts (a conservatory). I have been teaching music (both privately and in classes) since the middle to late 1950s. I have also devoted the past fifty-eight years (longer than you have been alive) to the study of folk music. And during that time, I have performed in concerts, on television (including educational television), in clubs and coffeehouses, and at many folk festivals.

You have said nothing to indicate that you have any in-depth knowledge of music—certainly no more than someone who has never taken any music lessons and maybe learned to play a guitar out of a copy of "Guckert's Chords for Guitar without Notes or Teacher" (and yes, there is such a book). And you have also revealed repeatedly in this and other threads that your knowledge of folk music and what it is all about is next to non-existent.

Nor do you display any awareness of the effect that music can have—and does have—subliminally. And that includes both music with and without words.

In short, instead of trying to tell people what they must do and generally set policies, you should be reading, listening, and trying to learn.

You're not the first neophyte to try to tell those who have devoted their lives to a particular thing how they're doing it all wrong. And, of course, you won't be the last.

Statements like "Not playing a song just because you don't agree with it is sort of like burning the books in the middle ages or cromwell's defacing of beautiful sculptures. It is no different in music." demonstrate not only a painful naivety, but a failure to grasp simple logic.

If I chose not to sing a song because I don't agree with its message, I am not destroying the song (a la burning books or defacing statues), I am simply not singing the song. I have a fairly large repertoire, but there are many songs I don't sing. I don't sing some of them because I disagree with there message, or because the song simply does not appeal to me for one reason or another—or because I haven't even heard it!

I do not sing popular songs, rock, rap, Broadway show tunes, Schubert lied, operatic arias, or songs in Urdu. And I do not yodel!

One can't sing everything. One must make choices.

This does not mean that I am destroying those songs. The songs still exist, and they are there for others to sing, if they choose to.

Think! If I chose not to read a particular book, that is not the same as burning it! The book is still there for others to read if they wish.

So you may as well just get off that bus now, Conrad, because it's going nowhere!

Here's a suggestion:   Get a copy of This is Your Brain on Music : The Science of a Human Obsession, by David J. Leviton – HERE – and read it carefully.

In fact, I would suggest that anyone who sings and/or plays music—or, for that matter, listens to music—should read this book.

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Conrad, in the reunion concert that Bob Nelson (Deckman) and I did together in 2007, the program was almost entirely non-political—except for one pair of songs in the second half of the concert. With no comment or introductions at all, I sang Eric Bogle's The Green Fields of France. When I finished, I set my guitar aside while Bob began Tom Paxton's My Son John. [This was the only example I could find on YouTube. Bob's rendition was considerably smoother.]. We made no comment, because the songs said what it was we wanted to say.

Get the point?

Don Firth