For serious? There’s a lot of really talented, compelling and outstanding artists beginning to make a name for themselves these days, and I find more than a few of them to be a lot more interesting than a lot of the people that exploded into popularity with the singer-songwriter revival in the late 80’s and into the 90’s. The difficulty is that very few of them are in the limelight, such as that is on the folk scene. Unfortunately, folk festival managements are doing a pretty poor job of promoting the new and interesting artists, choosing instead to focus on the established and familiar, not the new and exciting. That’s not to say that the established artists aren’t wonderful, but it gets kind of tiresome to see Dar Williams and Greg Brown and The Nields and Ani DiFranco and the Kennedys on the festival bills year after year after year in favor of the upstarts, who get relegated to “emerging artist showcases” and five minutes of stage time each. Don’t get me wrong, I think that Greg Brown and the Nields are wonderful, and I particularly love the Kennedys (who are just fantastic people to chat with), but it’s hard to find space for the new kids on the block.
Ogre, I’m going to have to disagree with you. Folk music, in my opinion, has less to do these days with the musical traditions of a culture and more to do with the ethic of folk music, which is music FOR people BY people. Those musical traditions are important though, and it’s good to see them being preserved by modern and young (and successful) artists like Crooked Still and the Mammals, and Nickel Creek. I understand that you understand that the ethic is dead, too, but I don’t think that’s true. The folk scene maintains one of the strongest commitments to independent music of any music “scene,” out there, and I think that they’re working to strike a balance that is difficult to find. The problem is that, these days, music needs to sell in order to heard at all, and it needs to make money for the performers in order for them to have the time and luxury of traveling around and playing it for people. It’s difficult to find the line between dying out and selling out. Some people manage to find that line, some don’t.
It sounds, Ogre, like the problem your having is that folk music (in this country, at least) has become such a mishmash of subcultures and subgenres that it can’t really be defined in terms of a particular culture or musical style anymore. I still think that it’s a valuable term, so I fall back on the ethical definition: by the people, for the people, about the music, not about the money (although, in rare cases, it can make you lots of money). Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie are folk music. So was Leadbelly. Chuck Berry was folk music. The Clash were folk music. Some rap/hip-hop is folk music (I would argue that the rap scene has become FAR more grossly commercialized and turned into a product than folk music). Whatever the reasons for your conclusions, I disagree. Folk music is not dead. Folk music as a truly meaningful mechanism of social change and power is in serious trouble, but I think that has at least as much to do with the successful turning of music into a product - the very thing that means that folk artists MUST be able to sell their music, or die. It’s a more cynical world out there these days, but we’re doing what we can.
Only performers with the HUAC seal of approval were allowed on.
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