When you flip through the Old Town School songbook, it's an American history lesson (with a smattering of tunes from overseas too). Ours hasn't always been the prettiest history. Folk songs are filled with heartbreak, loss, suffering, injustice, and death. But no matter how bleak times were, there were still reasons to sing--and coming together over music is one of the most powerful ways that humanity works through dark times and moves forward (and also one of the ways we just plain have fun together!). These songs make me feel patriotic and deeply reverent of the privileges I get to enjoy because of the toils my fore bearers had to endure.
I--hopefully--will never know what it's like to lose a child to starvation or cholera; to see my town crumble around me when the mill closes and puts everyone out of work; to be pressed into service and reap no benefits from my labor; to long for my lover from my jail cell window while I await the gallows; to watch my husband drown when his Mississippi riverboat sinks. But I can honor the songs of the oppressed, the persecuted, the impoverished, and the meek. And I can join my voice to the protests of generations that sought to overturn inequality in all its forms and never gave up hope for a future where we can all join hands and sing.
That's to say nothing of the fact that so many of these songs are simple, beautiful, and flexible! It takes seconds to learn the basic chords and melodies, but every musician can put their own personal spin on them. To learn these songs is to be given the building blocks of almost ALL music. No jazz, pop, or rock and roll tune would exist without them. They're built on this same basic foundation. (That being said, we will take on plenty of non-folk tunes in my classes--but you appreciate the hits more when you understand where they come from).
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