David,

Right on I think. Of course, you're correct. My VERY GENERAL idea putting my "Folksong Map" together was to show students how, before radio and the music biz, many (but not all) times people sang songs that told about what they knew---the lives right there and then. With the advent of radio, people could hear songs from all over and the lines blurred and became less distinct. (Other factors like personal traveling had diluted things to a lesser extent even before radio.)

My intent was to show the kids how they, maybe, were being a bit manipulated by the big music biz. Where things had been more regional once, now that we have a WORLD-WIDE MUSIC BIZ, the moguls are creating their product for sale EVERYWHERE> That means topical songs about canals & rivers & train wrecks -- like modern songs of crack houses & street gangs -- these might have limited sales potential except to folks living similar lives. POINT BEING: the music biz creates songs on few topics--mostly love & sex maybe. That's all that many people relate to unversally---"the zeal of the loins" as Joe Campbell used to say. What Pete Seeger used to say in those halcion days before he, too (alas) decided everything is folk: "Pop songs are only about moon, June, Croon and spoon. That was Pete's NEW ENGLAND way of saying, "sex".

Sure, the songs were morphed---as they always are. The song I got from John Berquist of Eveleth, Minnesota -- "The Pokegama Bear" -- about lumberjacks harrassed by a bear in Minnesota on Pokegama Lake--a very wide part of the Upper Mississippi River------that song was from Irish People but I put it on my map over the state of Minnesota. Pkegama Lake is right there near Grand Rapida, Minnesota---and the song was written as a poem by Frank Hasty in the 1800s for an anniversary of the town of Grand Rapids.

I was really honored when my mentor, the great SAM HINTON, used my map idea as a halfway decent way to show the same ideas to students about his own bag of songs. (Sam hinton 's Library of Congress archived songs from March 25th, 1947 are now available on CD. There are 46 tacks (songs) on one CD. Order from Bear Family Records---P.O. Box 1154------D-27727 Hambergen * Germany)

Sorry to digress, but I love Sam's music. (And don't ya be lookin' for heavy metal folk in this. Sam's one guy with his instrument. Just about perfect to my ear.)

One more thing:

The kids would color in the various geographical sections of the maps I handed out to them all and, in the end, would go home with a colorful graphic depiction of the very real regional differences between areas and how folksongs reflected those facts.

Art Thieme