Talk:American folk music revival/Archive 1

Archive 1

Article Started

All are welcome to improve this article. It's just a beginning. Joel Russ 23:22, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Material out of context

This article reads like a list of short biographies, not like an encyclopedic article on the folk revival of the 1960's in America. I suggest that someone go through and simply delete all these short one paragraph biographies. I'm too tired at the moment. -Dwinetsk 22:05, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd say your criticism of the article is pretty fair for the first portion of the article – maybe a bit less relevant for the later portion. I wanted to get an article on this topic started (as you've seen from my earlier note, above). I'm glad someone is taking an interest and alterations are welcome. Thanks, Dwinetsk. Joel Russ 00:55, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Citation Needed? Take Your Pick

So the ONLY citation required here is that the Kingston Trio had four albums in the Billboard top 10 simultaneously? (and I'll add that nobody else except the Beatles ever accomplished that and no one ever surpassed it.) I'd have thought that that fact was so well known and so ubiquitously mentioned that it would fall under the category of common knowledge since it's a recording industry standard. But memories are short, and the KT has all too often been forgotten as the incredibly popular and powerful force it was for three or four years in the late 50s and early 60s.

But since someone needs citation for this common knowledge fact - here are a three readily available:

1) Bill Bush, "The Kingston Trio: Breakthrough Boys Of The 60s Folk Boom." Frets Magazine: June, 1984, p. 25.

2) Blake, Rubeck, Shaw, The Kingston Trio On Record (KK, Inc, 1986), p. 37.

3) Billboard Magazine, Top 10 Albums Chart (December 7, 1959).

Hard to see where to integrate this but will try.

OK - added a citation to an issue from Billboard.

Sensei48 10:06, 15 July 2007 (UTC)Sensei48

Don't forget the blues, y'all.

Somebody has. And gospel. And Ritchie Havens. And Mahalia Jackson and the role of music in the Civil Rights Movement. Add to that a young Bernice Reagan of "Sweet Honey in the Rock." African-American roots music deserves more than passing mention in a segment on "Arhivists, collectors, and re-issued recordings." I don't have the time right now. (BTW, someone also needs to fix the capitalization re wiki style in the subhead(s?). deeceevoice 22:29, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

"Unsourced"?

My contribution was deleted as "unsourced" -- rather than put it back right away, I will contribute some sources for my contention that the folk music revival had begun in the 1940s and was quashed by McCarthyism in the 1950s. These are not controversial claims but constitute the story laid out in Ronald D. Cohen's 2002 book Rainbow Quest and other accounts:

In 1942 Billboard magazine wrote:

"Modern recorded folk music includes both old-time traditional ballads and new numbers--and these tunes often make themselves felt on the hit parade lists." "Incidentally" the article concluded, "it is interesting to note that the war is tending to aid the folk music field. Placing greater and greater importance on all things that are indigenously American." --Ronald D. Cohen, Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival & American Society (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002), p. 36.

For the next three years, no records were produced because of rationing of acetate, needed for the war effort. But in 1946, Alan Lomax wrote in an article published in Vogue magazine:

Nineteen forty-six will be remembered, among other things, as the year folk songs came to town. There is likely to be a ballad singer in Scene 1 of any new Broadway show, nowadays. . . . In Town Hall, at Irving Plaza, in Times Hall and Madison Square Garden, in fact, all around the town — Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, Josh White, Pete Seeger, Tom Glazer, Susan Reed, and many more step up to the microphone and entertain war-weary New Yorkers with songs as old as Scotch heather and political ditties as new as last week’s headlines --Alan Lomax, (quoted in Ronald Cohen, Rainbow Quest, pp. 51–52)

One of the most popular folk singers of all time was Burl Ives. I am old enough to personally remember that his albums of folk songs were in the homes of virtually every music-loving family, along with the ubiquitous Fireside Book of Folk Songs by Margaret Boni (and Carl Sandburg's American Song Bag, to a lesser extent).

In 1947, The Saturday Review, in a review of the Fireside Book of Folk Songs stated that

"There is no doubt, America has begun to sing again . . . . Young people with a guitar singing together the cowboy ballads, the songs of the Spanish Civil War, the aficionados of the ballad cult, the more staid discoverers of old English folk songs, the blues devotees, the college and school glee clubs with their arrangements of songs from many lands have helped pull us out of the nineteenth-century slough of sentimentality and cheapness" (Rainbow Quest, p. 54).

Sandburg called Burl Ives the greatest ballad singer who ever lived, and he had been featured at a presidential command performance at the White House for the heads of the Army and Navy in 1941 organized by Eleanor Roosevelt which was reviewed by Time magazine [1]. Ives' first billboard hit was "Blue Tail Fly" a single on Decca from 1948, sung with The Andrews Sisters, which reached number 24 in August. This was followed by "Lavender's Blue (Dilly Dilly)" with Captain Stubby & The Buccaneers (from the film So Dear To My Heart), which reached no. 13 Country and Western and no. 16 Pop in February 1949. In April, 1949 he was back on the charts with the first recording of "Ghost Riders In The Sky (A Cowboy Legend)" on Columbia, topping out at number 8 (country and western) and no. 21 Pop. In 1951, he returned, backed by the Percy Faith orchestra, to take "On Top Of Old Smoky", featured in the film "Valley Of Fire", to no. 10 Pop. Jo Stafford, the Andrews sisters, and Maxine Sullivan also had other folk hits, such as Sullivan's "Loch Lomond." And the Weavers' "Good Night Irene" was covered by Stafford, Frank Sinatra, and many many other pop singers. In short, the historical record shows that folk music up until the 1950's red scare was both popular and mainstream (others who sang folk songs in the 1940s included Peggy Lee and Bing Crosby, according to Rainbow Quest, p.64).

For the role of blacklisting in suppressing controversy and also folk music see Cohen and also LeRoy Ashby's, With Amusement for All: A History of American Popular Culture Since 1830 (University of Kentucky Press, 2006) pp. 296-98. Ashby writes that folk music was outside the consensus-building of the Cold War, "“Folk music hadn’t been made to stand up and salute' said the singer song writer John Sebastian, for that reason it had largely fallen victim to the Cold War, Red-Baiting, and blacklisting” (With Amusement), p. 354. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mballen (talk • contribs) 04:35, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Please read both Wikipedia's no original research policy as well as our citation instructions. You may not write about "your contention", however you may report on the opinions of others provided you cite a source for them. Yworo (talk) 14:30, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Yworo, I am aware of wikipedia's rules, but I am also free to supply corroborative evidence here on the discussion page to the citations I have already made here. It is unfortunate perhaps that I used the word "contention" in describing what you deleted. But I went on to say that what I wrote is quite uncontroversial, and in fact, is common knowledge. In any case, now it is also sourced and I have put citations on this page especially for your edification. For example, in Rainbow Quest (p. 54, cited above), Ronald D. Cohen reports that the Fireside Book of Folk Songs was "ubiquitous". So you see, all this can easily supported by citations as well as confirmed from my memory. (FBOFS was one of the |best selling books of 1947) It is also gist of the 1947 Saturday Review article I cited above that folk music was widely popular in 1947 and not confined to the margins as this article misleadingly contends -- and this time I am using that word advisedly.

As far as the article itself. It is not accurate that "performers like Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, and Cisco Houston had enjoyed a limited general popularity in decades [sic] prior to the 1950s". (Unfortunately most of the article is on this sloppy level.) More correct would be to say that Burl Ives was a huge star and enjoyed a great popularity in the 1940s (and not in the decades before when he was a struggling actor). Folksinger Josh White, who sang with the Almanac Singers, was also a star and a personal intimate of Eleanor and Franklin D. Roosevelt. (To manage their estate they hired his brother, who he remained Eleanor's driver and friend after Franklin's death). On the other hand, Woody Guthrie and Cisco Houston (who met in 1938) did indeed enjoy more limited popularity, since they were members of the Almanac Singers (formed in 1941), with an audience largely limited to left-wing and union circles. Conflating these artists and fudging the dates as the article does gives a misleading and inaccurate impression.

As you can see from the photograph, folk music in the 1940s was quite tied up with the CIO, which was the only union at the time promoting racial integration. According to Rainbow Quest, Seymour Peck [also of the New York Times] commented in [the progressive newspaper PM] on Sept. 19, 1944:

We today are producing folk music in war ballads, blues songs, and union chants. In collaboration with the United Automobile Workers (CIO) and the Political Action Committee, [Moe] Asch [later founder of Folkways Records], has produced records about the war and home-front problems, and he is now planning an album giving musical expression to the CIO's ideas on how life should be when Johnny comes marching home.

As far as the article's further contention that:

The folk music revival is sometimes said[who?] to have begun with Pete Seeger. The Weavers, formed in 1947 by Seeger, had a big hit in 1949 [sic, it was 1950] with Lead Belly's "Goodnight, Irene". This hit was probably one of the first glimmerings of the folk music revival.[citation needed]

Seeger himself, on the web page of the | Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, describes Alan Lomax as: "the man who is more responsible than any other person for the twentieth-century folk song revival". The Smithsonian now houses Pete Seeger's archive as well as that of Moe Asch and Folkways Records, mentioned above, and I think can be regarded as a reliable source.

It would be more accurate to say that the success of the The Weavers was an important factor in giving impetus to the 1950s folk revival, though Seeger is clearly a very important figure. (Incidentally, contrary to what the article says, Seeger was a founding member, with others, and not the sole founder of the Weavers). The Weavers were forced to stop performing because of the blacklist. Seeger and Josh White were not allowed to appear on television until the nineteen sixties. This, again, is all common knowledge, not original research.

Personally, I believe the article's inaccuracies should be removed and replaced with more solid information. Therefore I am putting this information here in good faith in case you, Yworo, or anyone else wants to do it.Mballen (talk) 22:07, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

If anyone cares to refer to some of the publications newly listed in the bibliography, particularly Michael Denning and Ron Eyerman, they will see that the folk music revival began in the 1930s during the Popular Front (first revival) and went on into the 1960s (second revival), after a period being driven underground in the 1950s, due to the blacklists. Some Cold War historians, such as Dennisoff (and Denning, too, to some extent), try to assert that the folk song revival was never really popular and didn't really catch on, but that the real "music of the people" is (or in their view ought to have been) cabaret and jazz. However, this is debatable and certainly hard to defend now. It seems to me that the continuity of folk string band tradition, represented by a lead singer with guitar, exemplified by Leadbelly and Guthrie, has been stronger than cabaret or even jazz. And rock and roll is a form of fast blues ("jump" or Kansas City style), a grass-roots genre.Mballen (talk) 05:16, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Addendum:

Source for Seeger quote on Smithsonian website:

The Land Where the Blues Began "The man who first recorded Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly, the man who is more responsible than any other person for the twentieth-century folk-song revival, has finally found time to tell what it was like recording in the Deep South in the 1930s and 1940s."--Pete Seeger, 1993, in book blurb for The Land Where the Blues Began Meet the legends: Muddy Waters, Son House, Robert Johnson, and others who emerged from the Delta to play the blues, the progenitors of Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger and a host of others. [Won the 1993 National Book Critics Circle Award].

Mballen (talk) 17:22, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

It began with......?

I'm thinking that the sentence "The folk revival as a popular and commercial phenomenon begins with the career of The Weavers, formed in November 1948" is an overreach if not wrong. Right next to it is a picture of Seeger performing for the First Lady in 1944. What say y'all? North8000 (talk) 11:20, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Well I think not, but of course I wouldn't because that was my edit. Reason: I was working within the perimeter set up by the editor who started the article. If you look at the lede, which I neither wrote nor altered, the original editor's intent was clearly to mount an article about the commercial, popular revival rather than the more academic, broader, and more encompassing folk revival, which according to Ronald Cohen in his five books on the topic runs from 1940-1970, as in his Rainbow Quest. At that, though, he overlooks the major "roots revival" of the 1920s with the first collections of J. Lomax and Carl Sandburg and the popularity of "hillbilly music" like the Carters, Grayson&Whitter, Fiddlin' John Carson, Uncle Dave Macon, Jimmie Rodgers, and more.

As far as the picture - this is Seeger from his Almanac Singers/People's songs era. Neither group was a commercial, for-profit entity as the Weavers were. Those groups sang mostly at labor union and other political rallies and the like. The Weavers did concert halls, night clubs, coffee houses - the whole gamut of paying venues. Revisionist history has romanticized the group into progressive standard-bearers. Though they did perform modestly implicatively political numbers like "The Hammer Song" and "Wasn't That A Time?", most of their recording and performing repertoire between 1949 and their destruction in 1952 (which resulted from past associations rather than current concert performances) was innocuous and nonthreatening trad folk songs like "On Top of Old Smokey," "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine," "Sloop John B" and the like. (And the Decca recordings are unrecognizable as folk music - in Gordon Jenkins' hands, the tunes become hyper-orchestrated pop. You can't even hear Seeger's banjo on most of them, which is like going to the Sistine Chapel and finding the Michelangelo fresco covered up.)

The original article stakes out its territory by declaring the Almanacs, Josh White, Burl Ives et al precursors to the revival. The choice to start with the Weavers indicates a focus on the recording business and commercial aspect of the larger revival. regards, Sensei48 (talk) 17:13, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

And further...this article, as with many folk- and roots-associated Wiki articles and indeed many of the sources they draw from, presents a vision of folk music that is completely skewed to a revisionist history of the genre that actually arose after the so-called revival. The few thousand people who frequented Greenwich Village and North Beach night clubs in the '40s and early '50s to see a melange of beatnik poets, jazz improvisers, cutting edge comics, and "folk singers" may well have tipped left politically, but they were all but invisible to the general public - whose idea of folk music was shaped by the Carter Family (who sold an unthinkable four million 78s in about three years in the 30s), Burl Ives' ballads, the occasional Crosby-type pop cover of a trad song...and finally the very non-political and very family-friendly Decca-era Weavers, a very different critter from the re-formed post-1955 acoustic Vanguard era group.

I believe the article would have more integrity if it limited its scope and was re-titled to something like "The Popular Folk Music Revival," pop-folk having become a recognizable sub-genre (or "folk-pop" as Dick Weissman calls it). The article could trace commercial, charting performers and groups and leave the political material for a more comprehensive AmFolkRev article. They are two distinctive and different strains in American music, and the former is usually neglected and subsumed into the latter - rather than the latter actually emerging from the former, which is what actually happened. Sensei48 (talk) 17:52, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I don't have much of an opinion, just trying to help sort out the confusing terminology in this area. We discussed and decided some larger scale topics at the Folk music article (and a bit at the Traditional music article. Too much to recount here, It mostly sort of acknowleges that "Folk music" is a term referring to two different types of music, one is increasingly called traditional music, with folk music referring more to what started with and evolved from the mid-20th century revival. I guess specifically, that would be the point where it became something more than just traditional music. To the point of eventually moving traditonal music out of the Folk music article, with heavy cross-linking and explanations of course. And of course, articles like this are very important. Again, I'm just talking, I don't have and am not expressing an opinion.

You know this stuff a lot better than better than me. Would love to work with you at those other articles. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 17:59, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

I just read the whole article. What a well done, well organized article this is! North8000 (talk) 02:11, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Scope matching title

Again, what an immensely well done, well organized article this is! ! ! !

I've been doing work on some folk music articles, especially Folk music and starting on World Music. The one thing that I've learned is that this field of Wikipedia has immensely overlapping titles/articles. If they were every "organized" I think that the American folk music revival (or that overall revival, 90% of which was American) would emerge as a core, fundamental, distinct full-article topic. The more I learn, the more I realize that the revival started in the 1930's, began it's transition to commercial (and the first nationally-known groups/performers) in the 1940's, was big commercially in the 1950's and 1960's (through mid sixties for straight folk, late 60's even larger as folk-rock) And it gave birth to a new genre which is folk music that is not traditional music which continues to this day.

I am bringing up the vaguer point of suggesting that the article eventually cover the full scope of it's title. And the more specific point that there are a few just plain-wrong statements in there. Most notably the first sentence in the lead "The American folk music revival was a phenomenon in the United States in the 1950s to mid-1960". IMHO defining it as only that approx 15-year period is certainly wrong and immensely in conflict with the sources.

And, to put that comment into its perspective, I again say: What an immensely well done, well organized article this is! ! ! !

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 14:12, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

I think that the change by Modernist was good, even if not in full agreement with my post. In many respects it did start in the 40's rather than the 30's as I had said. North8000 (talk) 21:09, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Foreign Language Songs

I copy edited out a glaring error in the section titled "Ethnicity" that I have to assume grew out of a lack of familiarity with the bodies of work of the commercial folk artists. From the very beginning of the commercial boom with the Weavers through the earliest albums of the Kingston Trio and virtually every one of the pop folk acts that followed in their wakes, part of the formula of an album by these groups was to include at least one foreign language song sung in the original language, in whole and or in part, often phonetically. Reflecting their backgrounds in the islands, the Kingstons included about a dozen songs in Tahitian or Hawaiian as well as a number of songs in Spanish; the Chad Mitchell group a half dozen or more in Russian or Ukrainian, again a matter of background, as well as several in Spanish; most of the rest with songs in Spanish and French, Bud&Travis and The Highwaymen chief among those. Detailed discographies will support this and will be added when time permits. Sensei48 (talk) 14:03, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Good catch. You fixed another silly statement which essentially says that have a song in English equates to bypassing all ethnic traditions. North8000 (talk) 16:18, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Recent addition

What do folks think about " A handful of folk singers, including Burl Ives, John Denver and to a certain extent Gordon Lightfoot, successfully transitioned to country music, which had similar roots in American folk." I've never thought of any of these folks as having transitioned to country music. Maybe a couple of country themed songs for John Denver. North8000 (talk) 02:16, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Good catch back at you, and I'm going to rv it immediately, as it is flat out wrong and without sourcing. Factually - Ives:absolutely never; Lightfoot: - per album cover notes from the 60s, suggested that he invented a genre called in Canada "country & Lightfoot+ but except for some minor country elements like pedal steel on some songs has produced no identifiable country music. Of note is that master roots/bluegrass/trad country musician Tony Rice put out an entire album of GL tunes done in bluegrass style, but that is not "transitioning to country." John Denver: apparently the editor forgot that when in 1975 the CMA gave JD "entertainer of the year" award (in a hugely unpopular decision with the membership) that presenter Charlie Rich burned the envelope naming JD on stage and on national TV and was cheered for doing so. North8000 - right - a few country themed songs but no one who knows country music could ever seriously describe JD as a country singer. regards, Sensei48 (talk) 04:03, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Cool. And I'm also learning stuff on the talk page from your post. North8000 (talk) 11:01, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Joni Mitchell

No mention of Joni Mitchell nor her prolific early writing in the fold genre? Judy Collins is mentioned, and as having done songs of others, but her most famous, Both Sides Now, was written by Joni. Olribeye (talk) 14:11, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

She is mentioned, in the "Rock subsumes folk" section. The reason she is not mentioned earlier in the article is probably that unlike Collins, etc. she did not record traditional folk material, so far as I can recall, only her own songs. Ghmyrtle (talk) 15:05, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

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"Other performers" section

I question the inclusion of some of the names in this section. Many did not perform traditional folk music to any great extent, if at all - Joni Mitchell for one. And several - Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Gordon Lightfoot, probably others though I haven't checked - are Canadian, not American. At the very least, I think their inclusion in a list in this article, which is specifically about the US, is debatable - and I see little encyclopedic value in expanding the list to include such borderline figures, especially where they are already mentioned in context in the text. Ghmyrtle (talk) 11:50, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Change of title and hyphenation

Tenebrae "Compound modifier takes hyphen", it does but not when the two words are commonly understood as a single term, as they are here. The term folk music is acting as a noun here, not an adjective. A quick google book search demonstrates common usage as here. Could you restore the title and revert the changes please.--SabreBD (talk) 08:33, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

I understand what you're saying about commonly understood terms. I'd have to note that aside from the MOS at Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Hyphens, we do also have to take into account WP:WORLDVIEW, and many people may not be familiar with the term "folk music." It's easy to misconstrue the term when it's used in a longer phrase, and while "folk music" is a noun the words are used as an adjectival phrase in "folk-music revival". And while you're correct that some book titles don't hyph the term in "folk music revival", I'm not sure that because others use incorrect grammar that an encyclopedia should as well.

That said, I would encourage other editors to discuss it here. For the moment, the hyphen follows MOS, and protocol is to follow MOS unless there's consensus not to. --Tenebrae (talk) 08:43, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

That bit of the MOS does not apply here because you are assuming that this is a compound modifier before you get there and it is not. Furthermore the MOS is not a set of rules that trumps English grammar, but a set of guidelines meant to be used logically. It is clearly not a revival that is folk music any more than we would talk about the English-folk music. You are also deciding it is wrong a priori and then declaring the books to be in error. They are still evidence of usage and it seems unlikely that all these publishing companies, some of which are scholarly publishers, got this wrong.--SabreBD (talk) 09:15, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

I agree with Sabrebd. I have never seen the term "folk-music" used in the literature. The common term is "folk music", without the hyphen, and I do not believe that anyone would be confused by the term "American folk music revival". Ghmyrtle (talk) 17:14, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

The MOS isn't trumping English grammar in this case, but following it. I'm not sure I understand how "folk music" is not a compound modifier in the phrase "folk-music revival". Would it not be a compound modifier in "folk-music curriculum", "folk-music standard" or "folk-music literature"? Honestly and sincerely, I'm asking. --Tenebrae (talk) 18:45, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

Don't ask me, I'm not a grammarian. All I know is that we should use terminology that is in common use, rather than terminology that is not in common use. Ghmyrtle (talk) 19:40, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

I would favor the non-hyphenated version. First, standard usage of the term across most books and websites does not employ the hyphen - including our friends at Encyclopaedia Britannica here [2]. Additionally, other genres of music do not employ it - as classical music or pop music. Would we mention a "classical-music festival" or refer to Woodstock as a "rock-music festival"? I see no difference in usage between "rock music" and "folk music." regards, Sensei48 (talk) 20:21, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

I'm afraid I can't access the paywall part of Britannica, and there's no use of "folk music" as an adjectival phrase on the linked page.

That said, it looks like consensus is leaning toward non-hyph. Given that it's an article title, why don't why don't we give it a couple more days to give a few more editors a chance to respond? --Tenebrae (talk)

• Support Folk Music; unhyphenated...Modernist (talk) 23:50, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
• Support Folk Music; unhyphenated Sensei48 (talk) 23:03, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

It looks pretty unanimous after four days and not too many editors commenting. I'll change it back ... consensus is consensus! --Tenebrae (talk) 23:43, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Done! --Tenebrae (talk) 23:45, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

• A few months ago User:Hl restored the hyphen despite consensus against it. The unhyphenated form is the standard in all the sources I have been able to find. Neodop (talk) 19:50, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

I also agree that it should be unhyphenated. Also that an article name change that goes against the long-standing and consensused name is not correct. North8000 (talk) 20:35, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

I'll see if I can move/fix it North8000 (talk) 20:40, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

I did it. North8000 (talk) 20:45, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

Possible merge or reorganization?

With one major absence, I've been the most active editor at the Folk Music article. I organized and built it into two halves...traditional folk music and contemporary folk music which was essentially 90% the topic of this article, the other 10% being folk music after what is typically considered to be the American folk music revival period, with an additional slim possibility of material that was from that revival which some might not call "American". My overall approach regarding possible overlap with respect to this article was that it was a (slightly) condensed version of what is in this article, which (possibly without the "slightly") is common practice in Wikipedia. During my absence what I had already arranged as two halves was split into two articles. Now, one of them Contemporary folk music is a 90% overlap with this article. Should we consider a merge or re-organization? IMHO, this article does a better job of covering the revival, although the other has some good material not in this one. However, the title of the other might be better in a couple ways....first it attempts to cover "post revival" contemporary folk music which needs to be covered somewhere, even though it is can be a bit "hazy" subject to cover. Second, I'm not so sure about limiting the description of this revival to "American" Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 02:09, 22 February 2017 (UTC) Substantially reworded North8000 (talk) 21:29, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

I think I'm withdrawing the idea. Although there is significant overlap, this article has narrower scope and greater depth. North8000 (talk) 15:38, 26 April 2017 (UTC)