MaJoC the Filk wrote (quoting Stringsinger): > "What killed the popularity of folk songs were the academics." Anyone care to explain?

The same way that Eng Lit kills off poetry for most schoolchildren: Once a butterfly can be pinned down (for display or dissection), it's dead.

The flip side of that is, for me at least, I started from the music, and it was so interesting that it caused me to study it to grow closer to it. Most of it can be appreciated on its own, but it comes to mean more the more you learn about it.

So it does go both ways.

Of course, I was a natural academic who didn't know how to be an academic until traditional music came along. :-) And I agree that English Lit classes made it hard for me to appreciate English Lit. I shudder to think what I would have done if I (when I had to choose between pre-1700 literature and post-1700 literature), I'd chosen post-1700. :-)

Lighter wrote: And you never had to read an academic disquisition or hear a lecture before you put the Kingston Trio on the turntable or Peter Paul and Mary or A.L. Lloyd on the turntable.

I mostly agree about Kingston Trio (at least the things I've heard). But PP&M? In the Milt Okun years, maybe. But "Weep for Jamie"? "The Great Mandella"? Seems to me they need a lot more explanation than "Barbara Allen" or "John Henry." :-)