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Article: `THE FOLK REVIVAL'' GOES BEYOND ITS HISTORY IN EXPLAINING THE ART.(Lifestyle)(Review)
- Article from:
- Seattle Post-Intelligencer
- Article date:
- April 30, 1996
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 Seattle Post-Intelligencer. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of the Dialog Corporation by Gale Group. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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If Robert Cantwell's remarkable new book, ``When We Were Good: The Folk Revival,'' were merely a history, its narrative could be summarized roughly as follows: In the mid-1930s, a ``folk-song movement'' sprang up in response to what Cantwell describes as ``the official proclamation of the Popular Front policy at the Third International in 1935, and in America by Earl Browder, shifting the ideological focus from a vanguard proletariat to an indigenous peoples' culture.''
Conforming to this policy, people like John and Alan Lomax, Charles and Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie went into the hills and brought back the work of black folk musicians like Blind Lemon ...