Conrad:   "worshiping the false god of quality will only narrow the field of people who get access to stages and venues and we need it to expand.."

Howard:   "Need it to expand? It seems to me that far too many people get access to stages and venues as it is. We should be trying to improve the quality of music, not excuse any old rubbish on the grounds that it's 'folk.'"

Exactly so, Howard!

Conrad, I think you share something with this young lady. Neither of you have quite figured out the way it works.

I know people who, initially curious about folk music, went to hear some local folk singer and were totally repelled by the lack of quality of that particular singer and simply wrote folk music off as something that may have great anthropological value, but not something they ever cared to listen to again.

One fellow I know, whose main musical interest was early opera (Monteverdi and such) and early music in general (consorts such as The Baltimore Consort), lute music, etc.), Elizabethan music (Dowland, et al.) told me that one evening he had dropped into a coffeehouse that featured a folk singer with the idea of seeing if he would like folk music. He got thoroughly turned off, and wasn't interested in hearing any more. I knew the singer he was referring to—mediocre singing voice with a tendency to go off-pitch, didn't know squat about folk music, and got all his songs from Kingston Trio records. So I sat my friend down and played a record for him. Richard Dyer-Bennet. The classically trained tenor voice and the classic guitar was more the kind of sound he was familiar with. This was—yeah, that's okay! I played another record for him. Ed McCurdy. Yeah, he was okay, too. Joan Baez? Hey, she can really sing!

Then I invited him to come to a performance I was giving in a couple of weeks in the Seattle Public Library's Lee Auditorium.

Okay, I'm not Dyer-Bennet (nor do I want to be, other than thinking that he had the right idea about treating folk songs seriously, not just as light novelty pieces, but giving the performance of them as much care and attention as you would a song by Schubert). My voice is okay (bass-baritone), but although I have had training, I don't try to sound operatic. Nor do I try to sound like I just fell of the turnip truck like a lot of city-born and bred singers of folk songs. I just open my mouth and sing.

My friend decided, not just that I was okay, but that folk music was okay, too. He became a regular at concerts, coffeehouses, and festivals.

And Conrad, he was just one of many.

Singing folk songs and ballads with a listenable singing voice (not necessarily highly polished) and putting some thought into how one does the songs (not just memorizing the words and singing them by rote) makes a big difference in whether people will enjoy the songs well enough to come back for more.

Quality? It does not "narrow the field" of people who want to hear folk music. Or, for that matter, take it up and do it themselves. It broadens it.

This should be obvious!

But of course none of this is going to sink in. Your head's made up and you don't want to be confused with FACTS. You're already confused enough.

Don Firth