The bearer of this thread has a limited and ignorant view of folk music, is not a branch of show business featuring pop artists turned acoustic but a vital and living tradition outside the commercialization of the music on stages, concert halls or "folk clubs".

Actually the genuine folk process has little to do with certain folkie individuals who are selling the wares on commercial ads. The genuine folk process has always been an underground river seen only by those who understand the significance of folk music as a cultural process, always in motion, never static and is continuing unobserved by many who attribute folk music to someone onstage with an acoustic guitar.

The process includes many who play and sing or just sing folk music for their own enjoyment away from the microphones and spotlights or on certain radio stations. These people may one day be collected by folklorists who use their material as a gauge of history and society.

It does not represent a star system. There is no American folk idol program nor will there ever be. Many young people just don't get it because they have sucked at the tit of the commercial music industry for so many years, indoctrinated by playlists and star worship and are futile in their "hipness".

In the meantime, folk music survives throughout the world on as an undercurrent despite technology or in some cases because of it, as collecting techniques become easier, and there is more of an interest today in folk music that is authentic than at any other time in our history.

Folk music is not a fad like the newest wave of pop music engendered by corporate music moguls who get rich off it at the expense often of the artists they purport to serve.

To paraphrase Mark Twain: "The death of our folk music is greatly exaggerated".