The folk singer is an American icon.
One who seems sometimes to have been born and died in popular culture within two decades, between 1950 and 1970, killed off by the electronified amplifications of rock and roll. Well, history, including music history, is written by the victors. Sometimes forgotten now is a huge part of the soundtrack of the 1950s and 60’s that borrowed heavily from the union hall songs, abolitionist anthems, race songs, and chain gang melodies of times past. These were the songs that a shrink-wrapped, subububan young America looked to in protest and passion as The Cold War dawned in America, as pop music and politics clashed in the smokey coffeehouses of Greenwhich Village, Cambridge, and Chicago.
We’re having a revival of the Great American Folk Boom.
(Hosted by Jacki Lyden)
Guests:
Scott Alarik, folk writer
and Tom Paxton, folk singer.