Music of the People?

January 4, 2010

Fascinating article in the January issue of First Things, on baby boomers’ responsibility for taking the bite out of traditional folk music with the current folk revival–seen, of course, through the rose-colored, watered-down lenses of age and comfort.

The author argues that boomers remember and enjoy the music, but not the radicalism behind it–indeed, the communists and socialists and unionists who were fighting for radical solutions to the deep problems of inequity during the Great Depression and later, in opposition to WWII. By the time the boomers heard and absorbed the protest message of the music in the ’60s, it and its messengers (Dylan, Joan Baez, etc.) had already personalized it, generalized it, softened it up for middle-class absorption. As one of the musicians playing traditional folk noted:

“One of the first things that must be understood about these revivals is that the folk have very little to do with them. Always, there is a middle-class constituency, and its idea of the folk—whoever that might be—is the operative thing.”

Fascinating stuff. Read the whole thing.