Modern Folk

When Bob Dylan plugged in at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, he fired the first shot in a revolution that continues today. Most of the fortresses have been breached: electric guitars coexist with djembes, and broken cell phones compete with broken hearts as fodder for the modern folkie's repertoire.

Dylan, DiFranco, and the Thompsons, Buckleys, and Wainwrights (both senior and junior) are already part of your life. You never miss a Billy Bragg concert. Even so, your thirst has not been slaked. Not a problem. We encourage you to drink deep from our well of contemporary folk.

Dirty Linen, fRoots, Sing Out!, The Living Tradition, and Penguin Eggs are the only magazines you ever read cover-to-cover. You know someone who owns a concertina. Okay, we admit it: you're scaring us now. But what's the point of obsession if you never attain gratification? Go deep, with our blessing.

"A Mighty Wind" isn't blowing anywhere near here. No choruses of "Hoo-ray, and up she rises!" or lasses with milk-white skin. Where modern folk does intersect with its much-maligned forebear is in its themes: the personal and social history of the people who sing it. Work, life, crime, love, death, politics, nature, faith…all are etched in folk music's DNA, and form the grist for the contemporary performer's mill.