Speaking of folk music, I didn’t go
to the Montana Folk Festival in Butte again this year. It’s free admission,
they have awesome acts and I'm a folk musician. What’s the matter with me?
Well, the matter with me involves
the reason I have always wholeheartedly loved and participated in the folk arts
at all. As so often happens when a culture that has lost its way and starts missing
itself, rather than deal with the issues that fester and alienize, the
organizers of the Butte Folk Festival are looking at their bellybutton.
“We present artists” their
performer guidelines instruct “who are firmly rooted in the community from
which their music derives rather than ‘interpreters’ of tradition, such as
contemporary singer-songwriters or ‘revivalists’ performance groups…” Thus
it bills itself as “the story of America”.
In a cultural vacuum, that’s O.K.
as far as things like that go, and this is certainly not a critique of the acts
at this year’s festival, the volunteers who give of their time or the people
who went to it. The performers are always top-notch, and the People have a good
time, which is all how it should be. God knows it’s hard enough in this
fractured culture to find a paying gig these days. Maybe any days. The problem
is not the performers or the people. The problem is that the folk festival is
funded, in large part, by Northwestern Energy, and that
“folksinger-songwriters” and “interpreters of tradition” need not apply. The
organizers--some of them volunteers--are adamant on this point.
The problem is that Northwestern
Energy is no vacuum. It’s a high-pressure system[ii].
Consider: In Montana, where Northwestern ever-seeks positive P.R. such as
funding “our” folk festival, we seem to actively court--and then ignore--fossil
energy disasters. The Yellowstone River spill (the Yellowstone River!!!)[iii]
, the Crow Reservation spill[iv]
, and recent un-discussions about endless coal trains rolling through
oxygen-breathing human communities where childhood asthma is at unprecedented
levels. Coal trains that actively and profitably abet the global warming crisis
we ignore even in the midst of Western Montana’s unprecedented string of
100-degree-plus heatwaves. Add to these tragedies the spill disasters in
Arkansas, Quebec, the Gulf of Mexico, Alberta (ad naseum[v])
within the incredibly short memory span of your average American T.V. viewer
and ask yourself whether any of this child-killing, suicidal behavior will get
any “folk time” at a folk festival sponsored by an energy giant, especially if
“interpreters of tradition” need not apply. Think, please. Was anybody singing
about Global Warming a hundred years ago?
When we consider who defines
“culture” and “art” within the context of such an all-encompassing culturally-cultivated
disaster as Global Warming, the singular question that we absolutely must pass
down to our kids and grandkids has to be no more nor less than this paradox we
so willfully avoid. How far, in other words, do we allow ourselves to fall
before we become mere caricatures of ourselves? When does perserverence of folk
traditions morph into pretension (think cowboy wannabees)? How do we, as
individuals and as a culture, creatively question and challenge some of the
less-savory values and standards passed from generation to generation before we
“as a community” fry our friggin’ selves with our own inherited bigotry. These
are “folk” questions that, in our world-devouring corporate culture, need
immediate answers.
The Yellowstone River, the Crow
Reservation, the coal trains speak to us from generations past, but do we
listen? As a contemporary singer-songwriter who not only feels firmly rooted in
the culture from which American music derives but who also feels it’s
imperative to use one’s rooted “art” to ask just such questions, all I can say
about Northwestern Energy’s definition of folk music is “how interesting”.
Global Warming should be the main,
if not the only, base and focus for any serious constructive cultural
creativity well into the foreseeable and the unforeseeable future. Sure, fun's
fun, and I approve of fun. But as a general thing “Art”, as we like to term it,
is nothing if not our individual and collective attempts at maintaining a
cultural continuum to the point that we create a better, or at least a more
understood, world for ourselves and our offspring.
I hesitate to post this, because I
can’t seem to write this down without it coming off as merely sour grapes.
Maybe so and so be it if so. But as a lifetime folk musician I feel it’s a responsibility
as well as a right I took on and then earned when I agreed to give my heart and
soul to a thousand and one free gigs for "good causes". Look at it
this way. To me, a folk festival tainted by a folk-anti-Christ like
Northwestern Energy is like watching a family member on drugs. It hurts.
Today’s Folk Question
Q. What do you call a solar energy
spill?
A. A nice day.
[iv] http://www.greatfallstribune.com/viewart/20130705/NEWS01/307050006/Gas-line-spills-25K-gallons-Crow-Reservation
