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A question or two (not rhetorical--I'm genuinely confused) for Michael Wood or anybody else interested: Could you clarify the point about "the strange sort of elitism" in folk music? It occurs to me that we're talking about a distinction that applies across the board, to all art. Is the contemporary audience for the music of Woody Guthrie elitist in the same way that, say, today's audience for Shakespeare is elitist? Is the "original art" hopelessly lost to subsequent generations? When I listen to Eck Robertson playing "Gray Eagle" (a version he claims to have learned from an older fiddler), what am I hearing? Was Eck Robertson playing the "original art" or something else? Is it elitist to have a taste for art that comes to us across time--or only if we prefer that art to the art of our own day? In the circles I move in (old-time music), the word "hippies" is directed at those musicians who come to the music indirectly--that is, who haven't learned it from parents or grandparents or other elderly musicians; "revivalists" is only a slightly more polite term. Who are the elitists here, the revivalists (some of whom are no doubt "privileged East Coast white yuppies" in overalls) or those who insist that the "original art" can't be made unless you are born to it? I once heard a fine fiddler proclaim that a certain tune couldn't be properly played except by fiddlers born in West Virginia. When young Bobby Zimmerman hears Woody Guthrie and works at sounding like him, do we call his music country, or folk, or just plain delusional? Sorry if I'm straying from the discussion or, worse, just being obtuse. Bob Taylor Independence, VA
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