Conrad, if you had been around during the first half of the 1960s, you would have heard folk music—i.e.The Kingston Trio, The New Christy Minstrels, Peter Paul and Mary, Trini Lopez, Jimmy Rodgers, The Gateway Singers, Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney, Peter Davey, Daniel Widdon, Harry Hawk, Old Uncle Tom Cobbley and all pouring out of juke boxes, the windows of passing automobiles, in elevators, and gawd knows where all else!!

Most of this was very slick and quite commercial, and gave a rather warped impression to the general public about what folk and traditional music is really like. I'm not that all-fired sure that presenting folk music in that manner is a good thing. Besides, that put folk music into the general tides of popular music, which meant it was subject to "Tin Pan Alley" commercialism, general market forces, and the vicissitudes of popular taste, in which all things are subject to obsolescence and ultimate replacement by something else.

And that's exactly what happened. The so-called folk music revival of the Sixties was swamped and replaced by what became known as "The British Invasion" with The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Petula Clark, Gary and the Pacemakers, et al.

The main good that the "Folk Music Revival" of the 1960s accomplished was that it got a percentage of people interested in actual folk music. I have former guitar students who came to me for lessons because they had heard Peter Paul and Mary and wanted to play guitar like Peter Yarrow and sing songs like "500 Miles" and "Leaving on a Jet Plane." But when popular, commercial "folk music" faded in the shadow of The Beatles, some of them went on (with a little nudging from me) to investigate the records of singers like Doc Watson or Jean Ritchie. I have several students who went on to become quite accomplished performers of traditional folk music, and some of them are teaching.

Except for blips like the 1960s "Folk Music Revival" (or "The Great Folk Scare"), folk music is like an underlying stream. It's always there and does not need promotion or "management" or people trying to steer it this way or that.

It is—and always has been—best to let if follow its own course.

And if you want to hear folk music pouring out of speakers, go buy some records!

Don Firth