Without yet having seen the movie, A Mighty Wind, I've had folk music on my mind these days. My Limewire hours are spent searching for Peter, Paul, and Mary; Tom Rush; acoustic Bob Dylan; Ian & Sylvia. I don't know for sure what brought this folkie thing on, but it coincides with an unusually stressful time---when the demands of being a mother are being outweighed by the demands of being a daughter. When I sit down to listen to music, I want to know "Where Have all the Flowers Gone," not "Are We Ever Gonna Have Sex Again?" The harmonies are complex and soothing, the lyrics straightforward.
I was watching a PBS special on folk music the other night and the audience snagged my attention. A few thousand overweight, balding, wrinkling, myopic, and grey haired old people. People just like me. They had one thing in common--a look of deeply wistful longing. Are our lives so complicated, so overwrought that the sixties look simple? Do we long for a time when we had causes beyond our bankbooks and college funds? Back when we thought that singing against war could actually end war. I remember when difficult decisions were whether to go to music festivals with or without pot. Whether to study for a final or march on Washington.
The folk music of our day was technically a folk revival---folk music brought to the masses and the media. Folk music always had tragic tales, injustice, and unhappy endings, along with the foot-stomping stuff. It was a way to process the world and spread the word. The best of it was passed down through generations, with permutations of lyrics and melodies. Today, the story of Barbara Allen is just as sad as it was generations ago.
What I keep hearing in folk music is sweetness, a gentle idealism, our troubles sung in harmonies and picked out on stringed instruments. Music has always had the power to inspire and to sustain the human spirit. And a music of the people spans different views and experiences to hit, literally, the common chord.
So, what are we wistful for? Idealism, community, or having the energy to worry about somebody else's troubles? Or is it just for our slender waistlines and long hair? All I know is that as I watched every single middle-aged person in that PBS audience sing along with the Kingston Trio, I was singing with them.
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