Not gone, just changed
Terry Teachout has a blast from the past post regarding old English folk songs and quotes Ralph Vaughan Williams from 1932 saying that folk singing is dead.
He doesn't get out much for an art critic, apparently. There are plenty of musicians, comedians, rappers and other people making the folk music of our time, including not a few people doing it in the style that those auld country folk recorded in the early part of the last century would recognize quite easily, even if the subjects might be a bit strange to them. skylarker knows a lot more about that than I do, since I've been an occasionally interested spectator and not a participant, but it strikes me as very odd that Teachout (who has an admirably broad grasp of popular culture) doesn't recognize that folk music has changed and adapted itself to the times, much like many other art forms such as theater and literature. The Muses want to be experienced in every age, and if they have to throw down nerdcore style instead of singing about country fairs and peasants' love, that's how they be rollin'. Word.
(Rachel)
He doesn't get out much for an art critic, apparently. There are plenty of musicians, comedians, rappers and other people making the folk music of our time, including not a few people doing it in the style that those auld country folk recorded in the early part of the last century would recognize quite easily, even if the subjects might be a bit strange to them. skylarker knows a lot more about that than I do, since I've been an occasionally interested spectator and not a participant, but it strikes me as very odd that Teachout (who has an admirably broad grasp of popular culture) doesn't recognize that folk music has changed and adapted itself to the times, much like many other art forms such as theater and literature. The Muses want to be experienced in every age, and if they have to throw down nerdcore style instead of singing about country fairs and peasants' love, that's how they be rollin'. Word.
(Rachel)