When a good friend extended me an invitation to a local folk festival there may have been more than slight apprehension in my voice. Maybe it was the extended period of silence, or perhaps the inaudible "uuuuuuuh," echoing through the receiver. Most likely it was my dumb-founded reply, "Wait, a what?" that clued her in to my fully warranted reservations.
It's not that I didn't appreciate the offer, but I don't consider myself the folksy type. Folk music is for sixty-five year old hippies trying to relive their tie-dye days, or for people who marched in political rallies to protest tuna fisherman or multi-letter acronym organizations like the FTAA. That's not me. I own platform shoes. I sing along to Power 99 and the Foo Fighters in the gym. I answer "plastic" guilt- free to the bagger at the Fresh Grocer. A folkie I am not.
But there I sat that rainy Saturday afternoon, crammed in a blue station wagon with four of my folk-lovin', Teva-wearing, bandana-clouting friends on our way to the Appel Farm Arts and Music Festival.
Soon after trudging through the intensely muddy fields, many of my folk festival predictions had come true: within the first thirty-nine minutes I spotted seven (out of what would be eventually 44) tie-dye t-shirts, a woman selling wind chimes she had crafted out of metal spoons, and a plethora of vendors offering falafel and other bizarre vegetarian options.
I ventured over to the Meadow Stage, which along with the Grove Stage, would house the thirteen different musical groups preforming. Erin McKeown, who had just graduated from Brown University only the afternoon before, played a mix of twangish rock, in a cool and smoky Irish voice, singing the lyrics "Girl, you sleep with success tonight."
Surprised at the music I was hearing, I could not help but agree. This music was not the 60's inspired background noise I thought that I would encounter. This music had cool rhythms, congas, and some kick-ass guitar. This music was cool. Folk music was cool. But my smile was soon to fade.
"You know this isn't really folk music, Liz," a friend told me. "If it were, there wouldn't be so much electric guitar......listen to Phil Roy. He counts as folk music."
Informed of the supposed boundaries between folk and rock, I allowed myself to enjoy the strangely beautiful lyrics of Phil Roy, such as "If you had to relive one day of your life, which would you chose... if you had to murder one of your friends, which one would lose?" Listening to his acoustic guitar melodies, I was baffled. What had the difference between the two musicians been? Had I been hearing folk music? Had I not been hearing folk music? Was this a folk festival at all? Just what was folk music anyway?
I needed answers, so I went straight to the source, WXPN's Gene Shay, donned the "Guru of Folk Music" by the Philadelphia Inquirer.
"What we are hearing today really isn't folk music, it's just a derivative of a form based on folk music," he mused. "Folk music is usually traditional music that has its deep roots in country or some kind of folk community. That's the nice part about most of these festivals, that they present a mixed array of music."
Was the public aware of this?
"I think folk music is something that anybody can sing, anywhere, anytime," said folk enthusiast Kat Goldberg. "It talks about where you live, and it's not all about love and trite things, it's about life. It's very bohemian."
With all these mixed feelings, what are the artists themselves intending? Dar Williams was able to answer my question.
"There was one point where I called myself a folk musician and then I realized that I was afraid I was going to limit myself to what I thought that would sound like, so I decided to say that I just played music," she said. "There is music made to move markets forward and there is music made to communicate. That seems more relevant to me right now than what [the label] of folk music is."
Michael Doucet of BeauSoleil had a very different opinion. "Folk music is music of the people. We play music of the people of southwest Louisiana of not a strict, academic way, but just music people enjoy. The feeling I get from a folk festival [is] that you are playing for neighbors that just might live a little further away... its less pretensions. Its just regular folks making music."
Music by folk, for folk, and maybe, just maybe, even for a platform shoe wearing, Jay-Z humming, non-vegetarian folk, such as myself.
