The main issue here is the contrast between the work done by seeger-smothers etc. 60's USA folk movement,much of it good work, in the area of cross cultural traditions and their seemingly lack of interest in political objectivity- political bipartizanism.

Did they work as hard to join hands with their political rivals as they did working to get us to join hands with members of other cultures far away and those pursuing class warfare?

When you look at it from the standpoint of human rights etc. I am sure that those in the distant cultures that we were encouraged to get to know and love had a very spotty track record themselves.

So if your issue with people you disagree with you is that anyone you dont share values with should be ignored if not removed from the earth or minimally discuraged from appearing in folk venues and media then would not the same apply to folk in foreign lands?

We don't know yet wether seeger and or smothers turned away people they did not agree with who wished to share their stages. We don't know that they did not send missions of discovery (as the seegers did to foreign parts) out to those on the other side of the political divide.

I think that they did not. I guess you could prove otherwise.

But by the tone expressed in this thread thus far I think political myopia, ethnocentrism and exclusion of any view that is not the received view is still very strong in the folk music community a place where all should be welcome all the time no matter what the politics.

Rememer that cultures around the world have values different that our own. To inflict our own values upon other peoples is to invite them to do the same to us. We need to separate political propagandizing and dominance from folk music as in the separation of church and state. It does not mean that churches cant exist but that we can all live together providing that it is done peacefully and within the laws. We need the ecumenical style events that happen between churches with vastly different beliefs. For that to happen imho people in the folk music community have to lower the drawbridges.

Conrad