The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #129293 Message #2908628
Posted By: Don Firth
17-May-10 - 02:03 PM
Thread Name: Singer Song Writer or Wronger?
Subject: RE: Singer Song Writer or Wronger?
I've heard a lot of commercial country music on "Hee Haw," but damned little folk music!!
Conrad, following on Jim Carroll's comments about Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger's efforts to spread enthusiasm for singing traditional and related songs, how do you explain Pete Seeger's constant urging people to sing folk songs and if so moved, pick up a portable musical instrument and learn to play it? Pete went so far as to write "How to Play the 5-String Banjo" and "The Folk Singer's Guitar Guide," both of which have companion instruction records.
Elizabeth Lomax Hawes used to teach folk guitar techniques to classes of up to 60 people at a time. Frank Hamilton (who posts here as Stringsinger) was a co-founder, along with Win Stracke, of the Old Town School of Music in Chicago.
Locally, Bob Nelson taught folk guitar classes in Everett some forty miles north of Seattle and I taught folk guitar classes three evenings a week here in Seattle. I know that such classes were being taught all over the country by people who were, at the same time, active performers of folk music.
Really, Conrad, you need to get out more, and while you're out, look around!!
Don Firth