Exactly, McGrath...

If I may answer pattyClink, the fact that most of the massively popular mainstream rock and pop music of my youth had NOTHING BUT SWING...no intelligence, no coherent understanding of anything on an adult level, no sense of history, no depth, no complexity, no subtlety, no serious comment on anything...that was precisely what attracted me to folk music, which had ALL of the above! And sometimes it also DOES have swing.

The huge corporations and greedy managers who market rock and pop music are concerned for nothing but sales. Thus they make sure that all the music they produce all has a "beat" (usually enough of one to stun an elephant) and sounds predictably the same as everything that has gone before it...while saying absolutely nothing. God forbid that their audiences should take time to actually think about their empty lives while doing their partying and buying "product".

Folk music, however, is written and/or performed for its own sake, and is about every aspect of life, whether or not it has "swing". That is what makes it worth listening to, and that is what has made it endure.

- LH