"When I was *in utero*, my parents ran the grooves off Odetta's "Live at Carnegie Hall," along with Peter Paul & Mary's "Album" and several of the Newport Folk Festival records. In fact, I believe I was two months old when young Arlo Guthrie was ascending this stage here at Fort Adams to wow the folk world with his brilliant, disrespectful "Alice's Restaurant." I and several other of the younger musicians at this festival were born during a massive and powerful folk boom --- a time when it was common to hear acoustic guitar-based music on Top Forty radio; when the Byrds had a number one hit with Pete Seeger's "Turn, Turn, Turn"; when the hottest acts in the music business were scrambling to learn at least a few folk songs to throw into their repertoires; and when intelligent singer/songwriters were vying with each other to rearrange some old ballad that Allan Lomax had recorded by mountaineers in Appalachia.

"More importantly, I of the so-called Generation X, heard the words of the most popular songs of the era and believed them: "this land was made for you and me..."; the answer is blowin' in the wind..."; and especially the son's response to the father at the end of "A Hard Rain's A'Gonna Fall":

   "And what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son? ---
     I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
    Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
     Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
    Where the home in the valley meets the damp, dirty prison,
     Where the executioner's face is always well-hidden,
    Where hunger is ugly and the souls are forgotten,
     Where black is the color, where none is the number;
    And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
     And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it;
    Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin'
     But I'll know my song well before I start singin'..."

"We modern folksingers know our songs well too, but it can be a different sound than the ones emanating from the Greenwich Village coffeehouses of the early sixties. Our world is even closer to the one Dylan described in "A Hard Rain," even if the nuclear holocaust didn't arrive as expected. We watched the world become rapidly more cynical as we grew older. They said the Vietnam War, Watergate, gas shortages, disco, and lots of angry people contributed to what the media calls our apathy, and what Dylan calls our empty hands; and by the late seventies, when I was ten, there was no more folk music on the radio; just some camp songs in the summertime and Dan Fogelberg. Even though I believed in my future as a folksinger, it was difficult to have faith that I'd find my audience when the only female musicians I could see were Pat Benatar and Heart (I loved Heart, but who could belt like Ann Wilson?). So I and my comrades spent the eighties making fun of Ron and Nancy, and digging up more obscure artists like Holly Near, Cris Williamson, Ferron, and Cindy Kallett. How amazed was I to find these artists' releases, lodged away in the "Women's" section of my Record Works. It says something about our culture (or maybe just about me) that I was fourteen before I realized it was possible to make records without being famous."

"Of course, I thought it was even cooler when Suzanne Vega showed up, and I could walk into Record Works and see a whole display of her "Solitude Standing" right smack in front of the cash register, along with Prince and Madonna. Then came this barrage of women who were doing exactly what I wanted to do: Michelle Shocked, Sinead O'Connor, Tracy Chapman, Indigo Girls. Here were people singing about the abuses of power that seemed to go unnoticed by our media during the eighties, and they were doing it with acoustic guitars and the kind of poetry with which I had been obsessed since I discovered my Aunt Laura's copy of "Freewheelin' Bob Dylan."

"It seemed like people were listening too. Bruce Springsteen came out with an acoustic guitar at his concerts and made the audience sing "This Land Is Your Land," calling it the most beautiful song ever written. REM and 10,000 Maniacs were sounding very influenced by the Byrds, while writing about every social issue under the sun. Country music began to meet pop halfway with artists like Mary-Chapin Carpenter, Lyle Lovett, and k.d. lang. Even Nirvana and Pearl Jam did unplugged concerts for MTV, and anyone who questions Eddie Vedder's roots should catch the video of him singing "Masters of War" for Bob Dylan's 30th Anniversary Concert.

"So here we are at Newport --- the youngest ones on the bill along with our peers and friends, Dar Williams, Ellis Paul, The Story, Ruth Gerson, and Richard Shindell. These acts are the future of folk, and maybe also the future of song-based popular music. We will sit in the sun, eat ice cream, listen to each other and to our elders, and soak up the wisdom and the history of Newport, and be glad and grateful. This is a special place and we all know that. This is the next day, the next step, the next chapter in an oral history that encompasses the whole world, and we know our song well.

"I think it's a great time to be a folksinger."

THE END.

© 1994, reproduced with permission