>>The culture,
>>while not necessarily being insular, is just impenetrable to
>>me.
>
>you're not white!

Originally, I was going to offer this as a serious consideration as to my alienation as I generally perceive this as one of the "whitest" possible music scenes ever to exist!

But of course, there WERE Black musicians in it (though few and far between)... and I don't get them either, for the most part. I have a hard time contextualizing them in my understanding of Black music history.

>http://blogs.citypages.com/pscholtes/images/We%20Shall%20Overcome%20at%20Newport.jpg

Ha! I was just searching on Google for this photo right now!

Was there any real, substantial audience for these Black folk singers in the Black community? Or were they some sort of noble savages "singing for the honkeys"?

>A lot of the edge for that scene/time I think came from two
>things which are somewhat lost on us today:
>
>1. Political edge:
>
>It was DANGEROUS* (and exotic) to align yourself politically
>AND physically AND spiritually with Freedom Singers, Freedom
>Riders and the people they were supporting.

Yes, I understand that... intellectually. lol

>And keep in mind that at the time that was taken, Seeger was
>still considered a Communist by mainstream America... while he
>seems cuddly in retrospect compared to rock stars, he was even
>more dangerous than Elvis had been ten years earlier; Elvis
>coulda fucked your daughter, but Seeger was trying to fuck the
>country.

Looking at it in the context of the Red Scare does add an interesting perspective that I had not considered. And I suppose that the folk adherents' propensity for peasant-style clothing could also be viewed as commie sympathy.

To be honest, the "Babylon" episode from Mad Men season 1 kind of illustrated this for me... seeing Don Draper in his slick suit and slick hair in the folk club with these bearded weirdos playing dulcimers and harps and listening to a chick reciting free verse about making out with Fidel Castro... I sort of got some idea of the vibe from that.

>2. Exoticism: It was incredible to some degree that enormous
>numbers of people were so excited and inspired by digging up
>old musicians that would have been lynched for flirting with
>their grandmothers. It was cultural voyeurism, prepackaged
>perhaps but still unattainable in any other venue to the
>average Festival attendee, to see the Moving Star Hall Singers
>or Spokes Mashiyane or Theo Bikel singing Jewish folk songs.

That might even be part of what bugs me... The idea of college kids and intellectuals dressing up lime farmers and singing songs from the turn of the century. It's a bit too much like a costume ball... but I am fully recognizant of how vain it is to criticize folkies for their "inauthenticity" when musicians (and fans) of all genres have always reinvented their identities through the music they love.

Maybe because this is a music that seemed to be so ardently reaching for "authenticity," it just appears all the more disingenuous?

No... I don't think that's the main thing. It's probably more that it feels like an academic exercise to me.

Maybe that's why I like Dylan... because he started writing his own songs, songs that lived in the presence even as they drew from the traditions of the past. And the scenesters originally looked askance at him for performing original compositions... it just feels really conservative and hidebound in some way.