Let’s just say I’ve learned to hate it. A pretty perplexing statement for someone with my record collection. In fact what I hate is what it is perceived to be, not necissilarly what it is. To me folk music is a somewhat odd mixture of traditional American music, mostly from the South played by primitive rural amateurs and contemporary singer songwriters. I know, I know, a pretty broad definition and even somewhat diametrically in opposition. But what most people perceive as folk music these days, and indeed since the “great folk boom” of the ’50s and ’60’s, is liberal North Easterners singing real white bread-no crust topical music that’s mostly political in nature. That is the folk music I have learned to really, really despise.
Contemporary folk music (which I’ll call topical music for the remainder of this diatribe) gets under my skin the same way that contemporary Christian music does. It’s just as dishonest and transparent. Although I am a theist and on top of that, a theist of Christian theological extraction, the whole contemporary Christian music thing just makes me want to hurl. Why? Because this music form is nothing more than a group of marketers using the guise of music to further their religious and political ambitions. These folks making this pabulum that calls itself “Christian music” would be just as happy to use cinema, finger-painting or even porn (if they felt they could get away with it) to further their presuppositions. It’s dishonest and on top of that, most of it is regrettably bad.
Topical folk music is stuck in the same reality distortion field as contemporary Christian music. Most of the people that find themselves in this musical wasteland, in much the same way that the folks behind modern Christian music, are in reality more interested in propagating their political beliefs than they are interested in music. In fact, I’d actually argue that most of them aren’t really interested in music at all. They’re just using it to further their (usually leftist) political beliefs. Let’s face it, most of this garbage started with the great Northeastern Folk boom. Political activists such as Pete Seger hijacked the music of the rural south to use for their own political aims. One thing that I do find interesting about most of the liberal elite that now control the content of what is wrongly called “folk music” have little knowledge of this music’s roots beyond the 1960’s. There is no real knowledge of the rural southern blues music or the music of the Irish and Scottish immigrants of the Appalachians. Their world view of “folk music” usually begins with Pete Seger, The Kingston Trio or Phil Ochs. In fact, they completely ignore the “secular” works (that is the music not of a political nature) of Woody Guthrie or even the new/old poster child of the uber-left folkies, Phil Ochs. Even worse, there is a whole schism of these neo-folkies that don’t have any knowledge of folk musics roots beyond Joni Mitchell or Ani DiFranco.
So in the end what are we left with? A bunch of lunatic neo-socialists using music to further their political aims in exactly the same fashion the radical Christian right uses music to further their theology. In both cases, much of the music is just as counterfeit and corrupt as their morals . The left that’s hijacked this American musical form for their own political gain are just as morally corrupt and dishonest and the Christian right in their adoption of bad pop music for their theocratic gain. And this music lover is sure buying and listening to a lot of Alt-Country and Americana music these days. Why? I’d have to say I love it’s honesty. And in reality, it’s really just folk music, without all the baggage and finger pointing.
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