Who Killed Folk Music?

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: Miken
Date: 19 Feb 02 - 10:04 PM

Don, Sorry I wasn't able to get to Bob and Judy's for the fracas on Sunday. Did get in some music as you can see above, see you at the next one! Mike

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: Miken
Date: 19 Feb 02 - 09:56 PM

I heard Rosalie Sorrels perform at a small coffee house in Spokane on Sunday. The newspaper article announcing the performance quoted her saying "The current state of folk music is exactly like it always was. Folk music is music that people need. Sometimes it becomes a viable, commercial thing for a while and everybody thinks it's successful....It's always there and it always will be."

It was a wonderful show, like being in her living room at home in her cabin in southern Idaho for nearly three hours. As many stories as songs and much reminiscing about a life of touring. She said she's retiring from the road and there will be a farewell concert at Harvard University in about a month.

BTW, the venue in Spokane is called the "Mother Goose Progressive Coffee House" ( honest!) and they have a performance of mostly local folk folks about once a week in a storefront at 1011 W. First. Rosalie had about 200 or so people show up, and they were a warm and appreciative audience.

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: The Shambles
Date: 19 Feb 02 - 07:11 PM

Its all true though........

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Feb 02 - 06:13 PM

No Mr. EJ, Sir. I would never accuse you of anything ;-)

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 19 Feb 02 - 06:06 PM

Carol, you aren't accusing me of being obtuse, are you? :>}

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: GUEST,vince
Date: 19 Feb 02 - 05:50 PM

In the late sixties and early seventies, there was music by floyd, zeppelin, third ear band, jethro tull, captain beefheart etc etc classed as 'underground music'. I think the real and (thankfully) still thriving underground music is folk music. This is proved to me when i mention to people in work that i'm going to see people (legends) like Jansch, Carthy, Swarbrick, Harper, and they say 'who?' cos they've never heard of em! There's always been a real solid (and underground cos it rarely surfaces on the mass media - apart from Harding's show or local radio) folk scene. So, anyone who says folk is dead does'nt understand what folk music is and should visit some of the festivals or local folk clubs and git edicated!! (in my 'umble opinion!

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 19 Feb 02 - 05:45 PM

Checked back with Bob, and he now denies the whole Aronowitz thing. Pinned him down to it, that he actually did say that it was Al Aronowitz who did it (killed folk music).

His response: "Yeah, well, people say a lotta things. Y' can't run your life by what they say. It don't matter what I said, no more'n it matters what the bus driver said, or the guy over there with the cheese sandwich. It's just unimportant. I don't have t' deny I said it, cos it don't matter anyway. Let's say it was dead, folk music I mean, and let's say a bunch of press people got the idea that it would be good copy t' say I did it. So wouldja believe 'em? I know a lotta people would, but a lotta people will believe anything they see in the morning paper. I don't. I don't believe nuth'n they say no more. You shouldn't've asked me in the first place. You should've asked someone who would tell you what you wanted to hear. Nobody wants to hear about Al Aronowitz...well almost nobody...and I know that, so that's why I said it. I can live with that, and I hope you can too."

It's all much clearer now. :-)

- LH

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: Don Firth
Date: 19 Feb 02 - 04:53 PM

MikeofNorthumbria, wassail indeed! As clear and concise an explanation as I have ever heard. Well said.

I was at a songfest at Bob and Judy Nelson's in Everett, Washington on Sunday: a potluck, both gustatory and musical. Ate like little piggies and sang up a storm. It started about three in the afternoon and went on 'til God knows when. Barbara and I folded at about 10:30 p.m. and headed back to Seattle.

According to all evidence presented at this event, methinks folk music is alive and healthy.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: Big Mick
Date: 19 Feb 02 - 08:46 AM

In response to the original question...............I did. I did it with the screwy way I have been playing the C, F, and B7 chords. Well maybe not killed, but I definitely wounded it. But Bro' Fielding got me straightened out. With care and practice, folk music should recover.

Mick

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: GUEST,DaveP
Date: 19 Feb 02 - 08:44 AM

Who killed folk music?

I, said the singer needed money for my dinner.

Who saw it die?

I, said writer over my type writer I saw it die.

Who'll carry the coffin?

We, said the band we now own the land, we'll carry the coffin.

Who'll toll the bell?

Not I said the 'catter for it is live and well!

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: MikeofNorthumbria
Date: 19 Feb 02 - 07:42 AM

Some thoughts on the current topic of discussion.

There is a line – though it's sometimes a rather hazy one – between folk music and commercial music.

Folk music is made by the people, for the people. It's something we all participate in, not something that a few of us sell and the rest of us buy. As long as human beings stay human, it will survive in one form or another, because it meets a basic human need.

Commercial music is made by corporations, for the mass market. Professionals are paid to produce it, and then entrepreneurs sell it to the public, for a profit. It will survive – forever changing as the winds of fashion blow one way, then another - because for a great many people it is a commodity as useful and necessary as coffee or soap.

Of course, there is some overlap between the two forms.

Many folk performers make a little money out of what they do – enough for a couple of beers and some new guitar strings now and then. A few make a living out of it – though usually a fairly modest one. (Most could apply their talents far more profitably elsewhere.) But nobody plays folk music just for the money. They do it for love. Because these tunes, songs and dances have a beauty, a strength, and an integrity which can enrich our lives in good times, and sustain us through bad times.

Some pieces of commercial music also have this power to delight and support us. Over the years many have entered the collective consciousness, and been adopted as part of the folk heritage. This process will probably continue. But though folk music sometimes makes a profit, and though commercial music sometimes has folk qualities, I believe it's still helpful to keep using different labels for them.

So what about the alleged "death of folk music" then?

Well, every decade or so, the world of commercial music seizes upon some form of folk music. For a short while, it gets processed and marketed as a new fashion trend. Then, inevitably, it's dropped again …

BUT THIS IS NOT "THE DEATH OF FOLK MUSIC"!

Sorry for shouting, folks, but I really, really want to emphasise that point. Folk music lives! It lives in us, and through us, and it will live on as long as we believe in it – whatever the moguls of the music biz, and their cheerleaders in the media, say or, do , or think.

Wassail!

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: The Shambles
Date: 19 Feb 02 - 02:57 AM

In the context of the thread, I think I am saying that useing your definition, despite the best efforts of many who did not understand the word, folk is very much alive.

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Feb 02 - 02:09 AM

Folks getting together to play music=FOLK music?

If you're asking me this question, I couldn't tell you. I feel like I'm swimming in a sea of jellyfish with these kinds of discussions. I'm just relating some of my experiences. I'll let you be responsible for whatever labels you choose to put on things. Although I think I included pretty much all of the various categories of music that are considered "folk" by different people in my little treatise there.

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: The Shambles
Date: 19 Feb 02 - 01:47 AM

So I guess it just goes to show how misleading labels can be, in the first place, and how much staying power a lot of very old music has. And also, just how alive and vibrant the music scene is for all kinds of old music, and new music that is played by just folks getting together to play music.

I can't agree more about the labels but, if we have to have one, and some people do, you have come up with a good definition.

Folks getting together to play music=FOLK music?

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Feb 02 - 01:21 AM

Wow. I got some interesting responses. Lonesome EJ, I'm not sure I quite understand yours. But working with what I think you might be saying, I have this response to your response ;-)

Just about everywhere I've lived in the past thirty years, there have been people getting together to play old music. Music from the Renaissance period, traditional music from the Appalachian Mountain region, traditional music from Ireland, Scotland, and some other countries. And also some new music. Some of it in the style of the older music, and some of it in the style of folkie type singer/songwriters.

In the town where I live now, there is a jam session that's been going on for about ten years (or maybe it's twenty... I can't remember right now). They play old timey music from the mountains, and a lot of British Isles music. That's the bulk of it, although sometimes you can hear traditional Finnish music when Debbie and Niles Hokkannen show up. Or music from medieval France when Nick Blanton Shows up. And some more recently composed pieces when Sam Rizzetta shows up.

Anyway, one evening a couple of years ago, someone requested a tune that apparently is considered "traditional" these days in trad. music circles. The thing that was really interesting to me about the piece, is that it was one that I had played in my teens when I was playing nothing but Renaissance and early Baroque music. Only it wasn't considered traditional in that context and setting and at that time. It was considered a sub-category of classical music.

So I guess it just goes to show how misleading labels can be, in the first place, and how much staying power a lot of very old music has. And also, just how alive and vibrant the music scene is for all kinds of old music, and new music that is played by just folks getting together to play music.

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 18 Feb 02 - 11:38 PM

(refresh)

;-)

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: MichaelAnthony
Date: 17 Feb 02 - 10:31 AM

It's going to come back around again in industry popularity, isn't it? Didn't the O Brother soundtrack go platinum or something? Someone authentic is going to make it big sooner or later, right?

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: JEM-Wales
Date: 17 Feb 02 - 09:20 AM

Please define Folk music.

To me it means music that folk will sing. (Please define folk).

In my office recently I have startd people humming, singing such variety of music as the Sugur plum fairy, The Red Flag, If you are happy and you know it clap your hands, Suger Suger, Freight Train, 16 Tons, We are the Monkeys and other songs and instremental music.

I was not the only one to start strands

We are folk - we sing.

To me that is the defination of folk music, be it "popular music" or anon music. As long as people sing it that is folk music.

If it is good enough to last into the historic memories of the population it is good folk music.

However much I may dislike the song - Girls Just want to have fun - I believe that in 50 years that will be considered as folk music.

As long as people have voices, and will sing, Folk music is alive and well, living in the collective brains of the population.

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: Desdemona
Date: 17 Feb 02 - 08:29 AM

The most important thing(to my mind)is that as long as someone is singing/playing some variant of these songs, and sharing them with others, then "folk" music will never be dead---it's the sharing & even the changes that inevitably occur that keep it alive. I sing these songs to my children, & they're exposed to lots of traditional music in a very casual, informal way; my 7-year-old's favourite CD on car rides is "Plain Capers"! While my eldest son now refers to "your weird music, Mom", he'll still remember "Freight Train", "The Fox", "Early One Morning", "Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill" & all the rest because we sang them so often back in the days when he DID like them---hey, it worked with me!

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: Suffet
Date: 16 Feb 02 - 09:08 AM

Or Pete Seeger. When you ask him, "How are you?" he often answers, "Still here!"

--- Steve

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: banjomad (inactive)
Date: 16 Feb 02 - 07:09 AM

if folk music could talk, it would quote Woody Guthrie, ' I aint dead yet ' Blessings, Dave

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: Bobert
Date: 15 Feb 02 - 10:34 PM

Yo Hawkster, Iz don't know this Aronowitz guy is but if he thinks he's the "Enronowitz of Folk" then reserve him a room with rubberwalls. He's suffering big time from illusions, dellusions and just about any "usions" that you can come up with.

The only way they can stop folk music is to BLOW UP THE PLANET.

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Feb 02 - 08:29 PM

You're wrong! All of you! :-)

I just called up Bob and asked him for the DEFINITIVE answer as to who killed folk music.

He said, "Al Aronowitz. He did it."

Only trouble is...I'm not sure if he was being serious. It's always kind of hard to tell with Bob.

- LH

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: Bobert
Date: 15 Feb 02 - 07:44 PM

FOLK MUSIC HAS NEVER BEEN HEALTHIER! That's the ol bobert's opionion. When I quit performing coffee house in 1976 in Richmond, Va. there was one place to play. Now there's many. Where ever you go there are musicans, lots of musicans, lots of small venues.

Plus lots of different folks bringing their folk oriented music. Just 'cause you may not like someones style doesn't mean that it isn't "folk music". Heck, Rap music, which the ol bobert hates.... is folk music. Blues is making a nice comeback.... folk music. Old time mountain music... folk. Celtic... folk.

Whenever one compares the future or here-and-now of any developing art form with a critical eye focused more on the past, they're going to be disappointed.

FOLK IS HEALTHY....

Bobert

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: Joe_F
Date: 15 Feb 02 - 06:05 PM

About a hundred years ago, G. K. Chesterton complained that men no longer sat around a table and sang; they sat and listened to one man sing, "for the absurd reason that he could sing better". That was when the rot began -- before television, before radio, before phonographs. I think, proximately, the cause of it was urbanization, which provided new opportunities to orchestrate & exploit the base motives of people in crowds for commercial gain.

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: Wesley S
Date: 15 Feb 02 - 05:39 PM

I've always suspected Davy Moore and Hattie Carroll.

But have you noticed that front porchs started disappearing from houses about the same time that TV was invented?

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: Mr Red
Date: 15 Feb 02 - 04:35 PM

Lonnie Donegan & skiffle was a pretty folkie and Cecil Sharp was a big deal when he got going. There will be a renaissance but not as we know it. I predict it - now I just need the dates and I will be rich.
Reports of the "death" are much exaggerated.

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: DougR
Date: 15 Feb 02 - 04:10 PM

I must admit, Carol C., that your post of February 14 @ 7:43P.M. makes a lot of sense to me. (Surprise!)

DougR

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: GUEST,John Hernandez
Date: 15 Feb 02 - 02:28 PM

Here are some more people who have described themselves as folk musicians or folk singers.

1. Elvis Presley (when he first appeared on The Louisiana Hayride in 1954 he asked to be introduced as a "new folk singer")

2. Steve Martin (in an interview after he made it big as a comedian: "I was a poor, starving folk singer")

3. Paul Simon (he said that it was his "folk musician's temperment" that enabled him to do Graceland and The Rhythms of the Saints)

4. Linda Ronstadt ("I'm more of a folk musician than anything else")


Martin Carthy is in good company.

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: Chicken Charlie
Date: 15 Feb 02 - 02:06 PM

M. Ted. No harm, no foul. Fowl.

Thread creep re "Jingle bells, cockle shells..."

"Hickory, dickory dock. Two mice ran up the clock.
The clock struck 'one.'
The other got away clean.

I better go back to work on that'n.

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 15 Feb 02 - 12:50 PM

Well said, Mike. A lot of good points are being made in this thread. CarolC, there was a time when Folk was in the forefront of American musical consciousness, when it actually crossed-over into pop music. Tom Dooley was a top ten hit. If this is what the originator of this thread is referring to, then yes indeed, "folk" is dead, and it was simply the victim of changing popular tastes. But it is also true that the number of available outlets for different types of music is wider today than ever before, and its quite possible that folk, or trad, has more listeners than ever before. Its a cinch, whichever way you view it, that the folk process is unstoppable. Contemporary music will continually pass into the consciousness of the culture. Yesterday and Yellow Submarine will probably be known in 100 years to most people. But will Barbara Allen and Booth Shot Lincoln?

I suppose its up to us.

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: MikeofNorthumbria
Date: 15 Feb 02 - 11:47 AM

The fantasy writer Terry Pratchett, was once asked whether he thought of his books as "literature". Terry replied that becoming "literature" is a result of a vote taken fifty years after your death. He preferred not to worry about that, and just got on with trying to write books for people to enjoy in the here and now. (Which he does, very well.)

Perhaps all of us who sing, or play, or dance, in any style that might be called traditional, should stop fretting about what label to file our stuff under, and wondering whether succeeding generations will continue to cherish it. Maybe we should just get on with doing it as well as we can, for anyone who happens to be watching or listening, and let democracy - now or later - decide if it counts as "folk", and whether it deserves to survive.

Wassail!

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: Jeri
Date: 15 Feb 02 - 09:29 AM

Eliza, I agree with your post. Well-put.

The problem is when people look at a book of collected folks songs ore recordings and say "these are the songs we must sing, and this is exactly how we must sing them."

The songs will live, based on the song. I love many old songs, but the only reason I know them is because people have loved them enough to pass them down. My guess is that ANY song that people love enough will be snatched up, learned, and passed down, regardless of where it comes from. It may be frustrating to those who care only about the historical songs, but it's the way things have always worked. People looking at this from the future will probably not refer to "folk music" as only the stuff that small sub-cultures played and sang, but what most people did. How many kids know various Beatles songs, but don't have a clue who the beatles were?

One person writes a song, one person sings it, and it goes on from there. All each of us can do is add our own voice and our own favorite songs. None of us can take anything away - only add.

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: GUEST,eliza
Date: 15 Feb 02 - 09:04 AM

sorry,last one! Martin C does describe himself as a folksinger,and so do I. cheers ec

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: GUEST,eliza
Date: 15 Feb 02 - 09:01 AM

The difference between traditional music and folk music is a funny intangible one. I tend to say these days that anything that permanently enters the public consciousness and gets changed by that consciousness into something different in each mouth,remembering the words slightly wrong,making up new ones,that sort of thing-has become a traditional song.Or a folk song. My head hurts! "Wild Mountain Thyme" is a good example of this. Everyone has different versions of it though it was written so recently. I think that declaring any one version of a song "definitive" can do almost as good a job as a shot of strychnine in the arm. Do songs have to be pop songs before they can be folk songs? I think so. No-one is going to learn your song and want to pass it on if it isn't very good,which means it is probably a mistake to call something a "pop" song if only one band has done it and it went to number one and immediately got forgotten! That also explains why people still care so much about the old songs that there are,and why it can be such a frustrating thing researching through old books,because the transcriber has forgotten that the process is supposed to weed out the rotten stuff,so some rubbish songs have lived on when they maybe wouldn't have otherwise! Not to say it isn't worth doing though,sometimes you may think the folk scene only knows ten old songs... cheers, ec :)

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: GUEST,eliza
Date: 15 Feb 02 - 08:36 AM

I certainly will not and they certainly did,difference is that I don't think that particular thing hurts folk music in any way-in case you didn't see it,what we did was folk music and I think that particular pop star did very well and taught me a thing or two. x ec ;)

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: GUEST,Dageham Doc
Date: 15 Feb 02 - 07:28 AM

Folk's not dead it's getting older,let's not forget that.Young people call to the tune to 'popular' music, and we were the young people of the time. The music is still there and so are we. Luv

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 15 Feb 02 - 06:26 AM

Coyote Breath: Why didn't you tell me? The Gospel Messengers sing Hallelujah Side. We would have sung it and Dave Para at Cathy Barton's Big Muddy Festival when we were out in Boonville last Spring. You're the only one I've met who knows the song. You bring up a good point. Many people don't even know what you mean when you say that you sing folk music. And yet, they enjoy the music when you sing it. Only goes to show how unimportant labels are. In the black community, very few people have any conception of what folk music is, but if you sit down and play it for them, they love it... and have heard a lot of it. The music is basically rural, so anyone who grew up in the country has heard at least some folk music, whether they call it that or not. Through people like Uncle Dave Macon, DeFord Bailey (the first black performer on the Grand Old Opry and a wonderful harmonica player, and later, Grandpa Jones, people heard folk music over the radio throughout the south. I doubt that Uncle Dave would have said, "here's an old folk song I want to sing for you." They were just songs.
Jerry

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: GUEST,coyote breath
Date: 15 Feb 02 - 12:17 AM

Ya know? that's true. People do like to hear 'the music'. I sang in church the other day and our little congregation actually applauded! I was stunned and pleased. I sang a song called Hallelujah Side which is one of my ideas of what folk music sometimes is and I sang it because it is what is happening to me and has become important in my life and I was so pleased to be allowed to sing it that all the other stuff was gravy. Folk music is alive and well and changing and shifting and resonating to a fair-thee-well here in Franklin County, Missouri. Folk music is what people like when they're sitting on the porch or in the kitchen or around a campfire. We have a winter camp this week-end and there will be music from Friday til Sunday almost without halt. It will be in the camps and in the old store around the wood stove and down at the bread ovens and in every heart and on all lips and that sure seems as though it is alive, now don't it?

CB

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: Phil Cooper
Date: 14 Feb 02 - 11:51 PM

I vote for the music still being alive. People who like it, like it alot. The others don't matter

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Feb 02 - 10:37 PM

...but if you want to compose your own song and post it on the web or sing it to someone else in the hopes that they'll remember it and pass it along with a few embellishments, go ahead. How about this one:

Jingle Bells, Cockle Shells. Rabbits in the Hay. Farmer Brown shot one down but the other one got away!

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: GUEST,Who killed folk music?
Date: 14 Feb 02 - 10:34 PM

It isn't who. It's what. It's sheet music, recorded music, high literacy rates, computers, and prosperity in general. Deal with it.

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: GUEST,Lynn Koch
Date: 14 Feb 02 - 10:29 PM

TeriLu - I once owned a Toyota truck with a bumper sticker I bought from Sally Rogers - 'Kill Your Television' It surely has done its share to kill the idea of singing around the hearth after dinner (assuming you have a hearth).

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: Suffet
Date: 14 Feb 02 - 09:55 PM

M.Ted, I'll risk the flames, but my intent is to be neither smug nor sanctimonious nor condescending. Rather my intent is to lay out what I believe is the essential nature of folk music. I reposted that message to this present thread because it explains why I believe folk music cannot die, let alone be killed.

--- Steve

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 14 Feb 02 - 09:11 PM

Carol, I think folk music actually was "mainstream" for a fairly brief period...like about 1958 to 1966 or something like that. It wasn't the only style of music that was mainstream at that time (rock 'n roll was also, and so was country), but it was certainly getting a lot of attention. Newport was a huge music event in those days.

That mainstream attention began to dissipate by the late sixties, and sort of mutated into the singer-songwriter phase (James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, and numerous others). I've always liked singer-songwriter material, in a general sense, because I regard it as the descendant of 60's folk music. Not to say that I like all of it...

- LH

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: M.Ted
Date: 14 Feb 02 - 08:35 PM

Sorry, I didn't mean to graze you, Chicken Charlie, I was talking to Steve Suffet--who started a rukus with his business about what a real folksinger does or doesn't do--you were being good--

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 14 Feb 02 - 08:04 PM

It must have been the same poor SOB who "Killed The Thread."

I hate that guy!

Maybe it's that damn terrorist, Capslock!

~S~

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: kendall
Date: 14 Feb 02 - 07:57 PM

Jeez! it's amazing what a slip of the keyboard can do! No one killed folk music, the Beatles replaced it in popularity, that's all. Of course it isn't dead; I sing folk songs and I'm a long way from dead! Hell, even Jerry Rasmussen is still breathing! Dont give me all the credit for inventing the porch, I couldn't have done it if Sandy Paton hadn't invented the house.

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: CarolC
Date: 14 Feb 02 - 07:43 PM

Was there ever, really, in the history of any broadcast medium, a time when "folk" music (however you define the term) was in the mainstream. Maybe I'm completely all wet, but I really don't think there was. It seems to me that broadcast media have always been more about what is popular at any given time than about either "traditional" music, or any other form of music that has been linked to the term "folk".

If I'm right about that, using whatever is being played by any broadcast medium as an indicator of whether or not "folk" or "traditional" music is alive, doesn't make much sense. Similarly, trying to say it's dead because people aren't playing it any more doesn't make sense either. Just about everywhere a person can go on earth, there are groups of people who get together to play music or sing songs. Much of this music could be considered traditional. A lot of it would probably fit into the other definition of "folk".

I can't remember any point in my own lifetime when this sort of musical experience was more in evidence than it is right now. And with advances in technology that make producing CDs and other recordings possible for almost everybody, there are probably more recordings of people playing "traditional" and other kinds of music that might be labeled "folk" available for purchase (or for piracy) than there ever have been before. Or so it seems to me.

Subject: RE: Who Killed Folk Music?
From: Mr Red
Date: 14 Feb 02 - 07:37 PM

Professor Child, in the Library, with a bad salad.

The plethora of boring, wrist-slashing long song has "killed interest" for the public at large. Which is perhaps a better definition of "killed".

call me a wollower but I can find a place for sad songs, but not a suitcase full of them.