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‘Folk music’ means more than ‘acoustic’ or ‘past,’ come to the 60th Folk Festival and find out

When the University of Chicago’s Folklore Society launched its first Folk Festival, the president of this student-run organization, a banjo-playing undergraduate majoring in anthropology named Mike Fleischer, said, “Mass entertainment is murdering tradition and individualism. As many people as possible must be exposed to our folk traditions before they die — before TV reaches into the backwoods of Kentucky.”

I wonder what he would think now, since he spoke those words in 1961. But I have no doubt that he would be amazed and pleased to find that the Folk Festival is still fighting the good fight all these decades later and against all manner of foes more dangerous than TV.

“Our intention is not only to preserve but to showcase this music, to allow musicians to connect with one another and with audiences,” says Eli Haber, a University of Chicago sophomore who is co-president of the society which hosts the 60th Annual University of Chicago Folk Festival Feb. 14-15 on the university’s leafy Hyde Park campus. There is to be a concert each night and Saturday is filled with workshops, dance lessons, impromptu musical sessions and other folk-friendly activities.

“Folk is so much more diverse and vibrant that most would imagine,” said Haber.

Haber was sitting with a former society co-president, Kate Early, who served in that position in 1980 and has remained involved ever since. “I got hooked as a little kid listening to the festival’s live broadcasts on radio. Then I sold T-shirts at the fest my first year at the university and then I was president of the society and, well, I’ve been hooked ever since.”

The first folk festival — aired live (and on tape for many years afterward) on WFMT-FM 98.7 and hosted by that station’s resident star Studs Terkel — arrived at a time when folk was afire, fueled by such popular performers as Woody Guthrie; Pete Seeger; Harry Belafonte; Josh White; the Weavers; Odetta; Peter, Paul and Mary … it was a long list.

Here, the Old Town School of Folk Music, which had opened in 1957 with a concert featuring a bagpipe performance and a sing-along, has been a constant oasis. In 1966 a bar called the Earl of Old Town decided to feature folk and in no time at all became the capital of the folk music world, rightfully so since its stage launched the career of such artists as John Prine, Bonnie Koloc, the brothers Holstein (Fred and Ed), Jim Post, Steve Goodman … it was a long list.

But the boom had already begun to go bust by the late 1960s after Bob Dylan picked up an electric guitar at Newport Folk Festival, the Beatles crossed the ocean and, well, you’ve heard the rest. Folk wandered off into the musical shadows in part, as one performer put it, “times became so much more hectic and so did the music.”

Those words came from Bob Shane, once at the folk forefront as a founder of the Kingston Trio (with Nick Reynolds and John Stewart), best remembered for such hits as “Tom Dooley.” He died last month. He was 85.

“The folk boom was a great thing,” says Early, who has also been a performer, currently with the Bittersweet Christmas Band, while pursuing a career working for such associations as the Ravinia Festival and the American College of Surgeons. “But there’s always something coming along to give the music a boost.”

She mentions the folk-influenced soundtrack for the 2000 movie, “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” (More recently there was last year’s Ken Burns’ “Country Music” documentary series).

“Some of the performers in that film had performed over the years at our festival,” said Early.

When you think “folk” some of you probably have in mind an image of a shaggy-haired character strumming a guitar in a dark coffee house and singing songs of chain gangs and broken hearts. But others are more enlightened.

Ron Pen, a native Chicagoan, was for decades a professor of musicology at the University of Kentucky and the director of its John Jacob Niles Center for American Music. He tells me, “The term ‘folk music’ doesn’t mean much anymore since it has been usurped as a word for generally acoustic music as a marketing and Grammy category.

“I love Aunt Molly Jackson’s definition the best.”

He gave me something written by Jackson, who was a Kentucky coal union activist in the 1920s and 1930s, a midwife, song writer and do-it-yourself speller: “This is what a folk song realy (sic) is the folks that composes there (sic) own songs about there (sic) own lifes (sic) an there own home folks that live around them.”

Pen then said, “Folk song is sustainability, recycling the dusty past into a vibrant present through shared music and poetry.”

Michael Miles is an acclaimed local musician, composer and teacher, named by the Old Town School its 2018 Musician and Educator of the Year. He had a long and impactful relationship with Pete Seeger, one of the titans of folk, however one chooses to define that word. He tells me, “folk music is the ultimate proletariat phrase, because what I mean when I say ‘folk music’ will inevitably pass through the filter of what you think it means when you hear those words — and those two spheres may be at opposite ends of musical spectrum. The result is anarchy or democracy or nirvana.

“Bottom line is that doors to folk music have always been wide open — you want to sing, you want to dance, beat on a drum, pick up a banjo, play the bagpipes — why the hell not? The world of folk music, as exemplified by U of C for the past 60 years, celebrates the world-wide traditions of human expression, coming from the heart of the folks. But beyond that it includes the where and the traditions — folk music can echo its origins and honor its elders. Flamenco dancers, Argentinian tango, vaudeville hoofers, Muntu dancers — they all represent the same thing — who they are, why they are, where their roots are.

“Hip-hop can join those ranks as well — born on the streets, reflective of the culture. The Indian raga of Ravi Shankar and the blues scales of Buddy Guy have the same elements — trumpeting an identity, amplifying its pride, and passing it along to the next generation.”

Pen and Miles have never met. I must make that happen soon. To prove their point, look at the list of the performers at this weekend’s festival. They come from all over the country and here in town.

“I have never liked the idea of America as a melting pot, of everything getting lumped together and all ending up the same,” says Early. “I rather like to think of this world as a musical mosaic, all these separate identities able to be distinctive within the whole.”

I read to Early and Haber something else that Fleischer said when he founded the festival long ago: “Popular music today gives people no credit for brains.”

The 20-year-old Haber smiled and said, “Well, we don’t have that sort of antagonistic attitude. We just want people to listen and enjoy.”

rkogan@chicagotribune.com