Concluding Thoughts

I want to reflect on the gallery event we had for our work earlier this month. The evening was a an important manifestation of some of the very values of folk music which I had come to understand during the semester. A room filled with friends, both new and old, singing songs they've never heard and songs they've heard forever together. Each participant came to the table with a semester's (or longer) worth of joys and sorrows and was for a few hours able to share that  through song and participation. 

In this music, it is the congregation that gives the greatest power. While the individual artists we studied and listened to were immense in their impact, the people who listen to, play, and recraft  these songs are the lifeline and the immortality. Of course, the Lomax's were crucial in this light too, for they took something which perhaps was already known but largely forgotten, and reminded us that it was still there - capturing a golden age in folk tradition. I say a golden age, not the golden age very intentionally, as a folk tradition has and will continue to experience renaissance, perhaps not in the boxcar of Woody Guthry, but a myriad of venues where these songs continue to be resung and recrafted, like our very own gallery show.