(excerpted and slightly edited from my Facebook posts earlier today)

It drives me crazy to see this myth perpetuated over and over again in the American media (NPR can be especially guilty) that oral tradition and ballad singing and homemade front-porch music and self-taught fiddle/banjo players are phenomena of the American South, period. Communities all across America had, and in some cases still have, these same things.

Why does every NPR feature about traditional music have to be based on something that's happened or is currently happening in southern Appalachia? It gives a very false impression.

Don't get me wrong, I'm enthralled with the music from that region, and the Norton/Chandler/Adams/Wallin family is a remarkable and important one with a very compelling story. It's just that each story like this - in a vacuum of stories about old-time fiddling in Nebraska or ballad collecting in Pennsylvania or banjo history in the American southwest - just reinforces a notion already in our minds that southern Appalachia is and always was ground zero for community music-making. I think Michael Hogan (another Facebook poster) hit the nail on the head about reducing the story down to what the listener (and quite possibly the program director) most identifies with the topic."

The entire Facebook thread, with comments from several others, is here.