>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington D.C.
>> Elizabeth Peterson:
Hello, everyone.
I am Betsy Peterson,
the director
of the American Folklife
Center and I want
to welcome you here today
for the first -- the --
the first of our
2018 lectures as part
of the Benjamin Botkin
Lecture Series.
The Botkin Series, for
those of you who don't know,
is an opportunity for the
American Folklife Center
to highlight the work of
leading scholars and researchers
in the disciplines of folklore,
ethnomusicology, oral history,
and cultural heritage.
It also is an opportunity for us
to enhance our collections
here at the AFC.
The Botkin Lectures
form an important facet
of our collections.
Each lecture is videotaped
and becomes a part
of the permanent collections
here at the Library.
In addition, the
lectures are later posted
as website -- and
not as websites.
As webcasts on the Library's
website where they are available
for viewing to Internet
patrons throughout the world.
So with that caveat
let me ask you
if you do have your cell phone
on please turn it off now
or any other electronic devices.
But on to our lecture.
Today I have the pleasure
of introducing Washington
based journalist, researcher,
and author, Rick Massimo
for a Botkin Lecture
highlighting the history
of the Newport Folk Festival.
Rick drew on his
extensive interviews
and in-depth archival
research about the festival
for his recently released book
from Wesleyan University Press,
I Got a Song: A History of
the Newport Folk Festival,
I'm very happy to point out that
he also did much of the research
for this book here
at the Library
in the American Folklife
Center archive.
And I want to urge
everyone to please stick
around after the lecture
to talk with Rick,
buy a copy of the book,
and there will be a book signing
just out in the entryway there.
Established more than a
half century ago in Newport,
Rhode Island, the festival
has become an American
musical institution.
Over the years the
Newport Festival has shaped
and influenced the American
public's understanding
of folk music, introducing
audiences
to deeply root deeply --
rooted traditional artists
and now classic folk
repertoires as well
as by introducing newer
interpretations of folk,
a generation of singer
songwriters,
and featuring legendary
performances.
Today, Rick explores
Newport's impact
on the American folk
music scene.
Relates a few of
the many stories
about fabled Newport
Festival performances
and discusses how the iconic
festival has reemerged
as an influential focal
point for a new generation
of performers and fans.
And once again, the
talk will be followed
by a book signing in
the outside foyer.
So please join me in
welcoming Rick Massimo
for his Botkin Lecture,
I Got a Song:
A History of the
Newport Folk Festival.
>> Rick Massimo:
Thank you very much.
Thank you for having me.
The Newport Folk
Festival started in 1959
and since then it's gone --
it's undergone a
number of regeneration
and a number of reinventions.
And one of the things that
I noticed immediately is
that the two questions
it continues
to ask every year are what is
folk music and what can it do
and there's no one
answer to that,
there are a lot of
answers to that.
And I also quickly realized
that the fact that there are
so many different answers
to that, that is the answer.
In fact, one of the chapters
of the book, I actually --
that influenced the entire
structure and the writing
of that chapter and we'll
get to that in a minute.
So the Newport Folk Festival was
begun by George wean in 1959.
He had started running
the Newport Folk --
the Newport Jazz
Festival in 1954.
He also ran the nightclub,
Storyville in Boston.
And in 1959 he brought Odetta
in to do what they used
to call the time
the eight-day week.
That was seven shows, one
show each night for a week
and a matinee on Sunday.
And what he noticed very quickly
was that nobody was coming
to the shows except the Sunday
matinee was completely packed.
It was completely packed by kids
from Harvard University and MIT.
And like George says, they
were all drinking ginger ale.
I wasn't making any money
selling drinks to them.
But Odetta was the
queen of folk music and
and the place was
completely packed
and he realized something
is actually going on here.
And this was at a time when
folk music was probably the most
popular music of the day.
It became -- it was sort of in
the in in one of the troughs
of rock and roll's history
that folk music with groups
like The Kingston Trio,
The Chad Mitchell trio,
The brothers Four.
This became -- these were these
were hit makers at the time
and George we didn't really know
that but he didn't know much
about that world of music.
But he saw that it
was popular and he saw
that something was happening.
So he began to have
long discussions
with Odetta's manager,
Albert Grossman.
And together they decided
to have a folk afternoon
at the Newport Jazz Festival.
And it wasn't long
before you realize, no,
there's actually enough there's
actually enough interest here
to have an entire folk festival
so that's what they did.
What he -- but like I said
he was not very conversant
in in the world of folk music
and he needed, what I refer
to in the book as,
a native guide.
He had several native guides
in the in the in the course
of the history of folk festival
and Albert Grossman
was the first one.
Pete Seeger, of course.
And this is from
the first festival.
>> Whenever you see here, banjo
player anywhere in the country.
With a banjo waist high, head
back, Adam's apple bobbing,
you san say like Killroy,
Pete Seeger has been there.
Here then is America's
tuning fork, Pete Seeger.
[ Applause ]
>> This song, the words were
written by a man in Wales.
A man who was raised
as a coal miner.
And he rewrote a little
old nursery rhyme.
The nursery rhyme
originally said, oranges
and lemons say the
bells of St. Clement's.
But he rewrote it
for all the bells
in the little mining
towns of his home.
>> Rick Massimo: Right.
Well that clip started right at
the very beginning and the edit
that I had in there didn't
actually take so we'll move on.
But what I wanted to
say about Pete Seeger
and the first festival is
that right at the beginning,
the argument, the dispute
over what real folk music
was began right then.
At the -- on the last
day of the folk festival,
the Kingston Trio were
supposed to be the --
was supposed to be
the headliners.
They were supposed to
finish the night out.
And one of -- one of the
co-organizers, Lewis Lorillard,
he was one of the
organizers of the
of the Jazz Festival as well.
He was getting besieged
by people all day.
"Can you put the Kingston
Trio on a bit earlier?
It's Sunday night, I got to get
home, I got a babysitter, etc."
So finally he did that and Earl
Scruggs who was supposed to go
on before the Kingston
Trio, they put him last.
Problem was, after the Kingston
Trio were done, you know,
they had Charlie on the MTA,
Cerocero, they had Tom Dooley.
After all these hits,
people were charged
up they were they
were going crazy.
They wanted them to stay.
When Earl Scruggs came
on, everyone said --
well, I mean, you know,
everyone was bored by this
and everyone was chanting
for the Kingston
Trio to come back on.
Even, I believe it was Dave
Guard, one of the members
of the Kingston Trio,
said -- came out and said.
"Guys, please.
You know, come on.
Show some respect."
Didn't work.
He did a couple of songs,
and then he left, and they --
and the Kingston
Trio came back on.
This was a problem in the in the
folk music world at the time.
And George Wing will tell you
he lost a lot of respect in the
in the folk music
world over that.
But that conflict actually
started even before hand.
The day before, it
was the second day
of the first Newport
Folk Festival
and there was a panel
discussion on what --
on whether what was
being presented
at the Newport Folk Festival
was sufficiently real folk music
and whether it was going to
destroy genuine folk music
and whether the mass production
of music was going to lead to a
to a bland monochromatic world.
So these are things
that happened right
from the beginning and they
they're continuing today.
Joan Baez of course, she
was probably the discovery
of the first festival.
She did a guest spot with Bob
Gibson and it was unannounced.
In fact, John Cowan
told me that he was --
he had been chatting up Joan
Baez for a couple of days.
And finally on that last evening
she said, you know, "Excuse me.
I got to go do something
with this guy."
And he's like, "I don't
know what that is."
But as he watched and she
got up with him and she sang
and the whole place went crazy.
And let's see what
we have this time.
[ Music ]
Well shorter than I
intended but never mind.
So after the second Newport Folk
Festival in 1960 there was --
it -- the festival
came onto one of its --
came up to one of its hiatuses
that it's had over the years.
Essentially what happened
is that the Jazz Festival
which is the week
afterwards, there was rioting
and destruction in the
streets of Newport from --
not from people who
were in the festival
but the whole crowd
outside the festival.
A, you know, there weren't
rock festivals at the time.
It wasn't the kind of place.
So your -- it was sort of
your mass happening kind of --
it was sort of your
mass happening
that would bring droves of
young people to Newport,
some of whom went in to
hear the music and some
of whom had just come
to cause trouble.
So after the 1960 festival, the
Newport festivals were kicked
out of Newport for
a couple of years.
They came back in 1963.
In 1963 there were a
couple of major changes
to the way the festival was run.
First of all, Albert
Grossman was out.
He was too busy with
his own work.
Pete Seeger became --
what I would call the
second native guide
to folk music for George Wing.
And it reorganized as
a nonprofit festival.
And that may sound like inside
baseball but what happened,
the main point of the
structure of the nonprofit was
that every artist got $50 a
day whether you were Bob Dylan
or Joan Baez or, you
know, the second fiddler
for cousin Emmy's band.
You got $50 a day.
And the proceeds from that went
into a nonprofit foundation
that was dedicated to the
discovery and the promulgation
of folk music and
indigenous music nationwide.
There was also, at the time, a
strong current of social justice
that ran through the festival.
This is probably
the capstone moment.
This is -- let's see.
That's Peter, Paul, and
Mary, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan,
the Freedom Singers,
Pete Seeger,
and Theo Bikel singing We
Shall Overcome at the end
of the Saturday of
the 1963 festival.
McKell later called
it the supreme moment
in the national seance
and one of the things
that I think is important
to note is
that this is a song
that already existed.
I think that -- in the fact
this wasn't even the first time
that this song was
sung in Newport.
Guy Carillon sang it in 1960.
But it's a matter of context.
It's not just the performers
and it's not just the song
that make a musical
moment iconic.
It's the audience and it's
the time that it comes in.
This was July 1963, a
month later was the march
on Washington.
A couple of weeks after that was
the Birmingham church bombing.
And, you know the
Civil Rights Act
and the Voting Rights Act
were still in the future.
So this is why this is
the moment that stuck
because this was a, you know, it
was a large -- it had an impact.
Soon after this, President
Johnson was saying that,
you know, that the problem,
the Civil Rights problem is
not just a Negro problem,
it's a problem for all of us to
overcome and we shall overcome.
And that was kind of
an earthshaking moment
for a president to say
something like that.
It was, you know, it -- I --
all I can relate it to is the
president saying black lives
matter or, you know, this
was a -- consider, you know,
the Civil Rights Movement was
still considered a radical kind
of fringe at the time.
And for a president
to pick up a phrase
like that was significant.
And of course it wasn't just
because of the Newport Folk
Festival but it was a sign
of where the folk knew --
where the folk movement was
and the Newport Festival
was at the forefront of that
[ Music ]
Okay. So that's Lightnin'
Hopkins.
And one of the other key moments
of the 1963 festival was the
discovery, and the rediscovery,
and the presentation of blues
singers such as himself.
Such as Mississippi John Hurt.
This was part of what the
nonprofit structure did.
They were -- people were --
and the Newport people
weren't the only people
but there were people
going down in the South
and finding these singers who
had recorded a couple of sides
at the time, you know, in the
in the 30's and '40s or so
but no one had seen
them ever since.
In the case of Mississippi
John Hurt, for example,
he came to the Newport Festival
in 1963 and somebody told him,
"You're not Mississippi
John Hurt.
Mississippi John Hurt is dead.
I have that unreliable
authority."
And in fact, Dick Spots
was one of the people
who discovered him, you
know, it's a funny story.
But he said, "Well let's see.
He has a song called" -- He
explained how they found him.
They said, "Well, you know,
we figured he had a song
called Avalon Blues."
And said, "Avalon's my home."
And his name is Mississippi
John Hurt
so he's probably
from Mississippi.
So let's see if there is a town
called Avalon, Mississippi.
And so they had to
get ,you know,
south of the Mason-Dixon line
before they could even find a
map that had Avalon,
Mississippi on it
but there was so they found it.
And they -- once they found
somebody in Avalon, Mississippi,
they stopped the car, and
they got out, and they said,
"Do you know a guy
named John hurt?"
"The, what, guitar player?"
"Yeah." "Oh yeah.
He's right over there."
And that's how they found him.
This kind of field work was
one of the very important --
one of the very important
aspects of the
of the nonprofit Newport Folk
Festival of the mid '60s.
[ Music ]
>> Right. So that is a
Cajun band consisting
of Adam Landreneau, Cyprien
Landreneau and Jerry Devillier.
That was at the 1965 festival.
At the 1964 festival, which I
could not find a picture of,
an ad-hoc Cajun band
with Dewey Balfa
as a substitute guitar player,
came to the Newport Festival
and that was the first time that
Cajun music had been performed
in a large, sort of, concert
setting outside of Louisiana.
And the thing about that was a
lot of people in Louisiana said
that they shouldn't go.
There were op eds and
the newspapers saying.
"They shouldn't come.
They shouldn't leave Louisiana."
Because Cajuns were
considered these backwards,
embarrassing kind of people
and they're also considered
these sort of, you know,
they were maybe they
were second,
third generation immigrants but
they were basically not real,
you know, they were
not the real thing.
And in fact, I've been told a
lot of Cajuns felt the same way.
They said, "No, they
shouldn't go up there and play.
They're just going
to embarrass us
and the entire state
of Louisiana."
Of course that didn't happen
and the place went crazy.
You know, I've pulled a
little sleight of hand.
That that cut is actually
from the Cajun band's
1964 performance.
And what happened
there was twofold.
The -- an entire, you know, fans
from all over the country came
and they heard Cajun music and
suddenly you had Cajun fans
from all over the country and
there was hospitable territory
for Cajun musicians to travel
and play across the U.S.
And at the same time,
Dewey Balfa, especially,
came back to Louisiana
and said, "What --
you know, we just
knocked people --
we just got a standing
ovation in Newport Rhode Island
and I come back here and you
act like you don't know me.
This is not right.
This is -- you know, my culture
is not a second-class culture."
And he was determined that
it was going to be respected
and that it was going
to be known.
And that is what happened, you
know, with help funding from the
from the Newport Folk
Foundation, among others.
There started -- they started
holding Cajun music mini
festivals and contests
and concerts in Louisiana.
And that became instrumental in
popularizing and bringing sort
of a cultural a cultural
respect to Cajun music
and culture in Louisiana itself.
So it worked inside the state
and it worked outside the state.
Bob Jones, who I'll get to
in a moment, told me a story.
He was he was on one
of these road trips.
They were scouting out talent
to play at the Newport festival.
And he, and Ralph
Rinzler, and Revon Reed,
and a couple other people were
in this car driving
along the road.
And they stopped and asked
this Cajun guy for directions,
I believe it was Ralph.
I believe it was Ralph Rinzler
who asked for directions.
And the guy gave
them the directions
and then he asked them,
"You're not Cajun.
How do you know my language?"
And Ralph Rinzler said, "Well
I learned it in school."
And he said, "School?
You learned this
language in school?"
He said, "Yeah, you know,
I have books, teachers.
I learned it."
He said, "People write
this language down?"
They had no -- he had no idea.
And so the effect that --
Bob Jones will tell you.
The effect that this
had on him to know
that his language was
something that was in books
and that was taught in school.
The effect that it
had on him was,
he was just completely blown
away by this and he'll tell you
that was one of the
great moments he had
when he was traveling
through the south.
And that, again, that's part
of what the nonprofit structure
of the Newport Folk Festival
was able to accomplish.
We know who this is
[ Music ]
So that's Bob Dylan going
electric at Newport in 1965.
That was his first performance
with an electric guitar
and a full backup band.
That's one of those
sort of seismic moments
that affected a lot of people
in a lot of different ways.
And thanks to, for example
Martin Scorsese's Dylan
documentary, we kind of know
-- we know what happened.
We can hear the music.
What we don't know is how --
what's different is
how it hit each person.
I, when I started writing
what became this book.
I started as a series of stories
for the Providence Journal
where I was working at the
time, I started asking people
about this and I
started hearing,
"Oh the whole place went crazy.
People were booing
and throwing things."
And I started hearing,
"Well people loved it."
And I started hearing,
"Well it sounded great."
"It sounded terrible."
"People booed."
"Nobody booed."
"Well I booed."
And when I started to think
of how I was going to write
about this, it occurred to
me that that is the answer
to what actually happened
at Newport that evening.
There's -- everyone has a
different answer and the fact
that everyone has a different
answer is the answer.
And you know, I ask myself,
is that is that a cop out?
But I don't think it is.
You can listen to the
tapes for yourself
and decide what you think.
But the fact is each
person saw it differently
or at least there were -- there
was an entire kaleidoscope
of different reactions to it.
It was a thrilling sort
of look into the future.
It was a betrayal.
It is especially a sacrilege
because he had done
it at Newport.
You know, I feel like
people couldn't have been
that surprised because Like a
Rolling Stone was the number two
records in the country
at the time.
And he had sort of --
he started off in 1963
with these denim work
shirts and singing songs
about the coal miners
and that sort of thing.
And then there's a
wonderful moment of footage
that Murray Lerner shot in 1964
of Bob Dylan playing
Mr. Tambourine Man.
And so, you know, solo acoustic.
But Pete Seeger is
sitting off to the side.
He is -- he was one of the
people who introduced him.
And he's just sort of,
"Well I'm going to try
to make sense of this, you know.
It's Bob, so I know that
it's coming from a good place
but I don't -- what
is he talking about?"
And so this was the next
step in the process.
And of course by the
end of that year,
he had kind of left the folk
music world behind entirely
and George Wing will
tell you that too.
He said, "By 1966 I knew
we were having problems."
So like I said in the book,
I mean, you know, he's --
they thought he was going
to sort of shine a --
they thought he was going
to shine a light on --
I think they thought he
was going to shine a light
on the folk music world
and who was in it.
When in fact he sort
of left a bit
of scorched earth behind
him where he had been.
Because there was
all sorts of --
there was still plenty
of great music being made
but there was all sorts of
conflict and recrimination.
And the other thing
that happened is simply,
he demonstrated for a lot of
performers, and then for a lot
of audience members, that you
could you could have intelligent
lyrics, you could
have poetic lyrics,
you could have evocative
lyrics, and play rock and roll.
And obviously the Beatles
had something to do with that
as well but he influenced a lot
of performers and a lot of fans
to go off with him
and play rock music
and that left the
Newport Folk Festival
in kind of a difficult place.
Now this is the finale
of the 1967 festival.
That is Judy Collins,
Theodore Bikel.
I don't know who's
right in the back.
Then there's Arlo Guthrie, Mimi
Farina, Joan Baez, Jim Kweskin,
Maria Muldaur, and George
Wing fitting in very perfectly
with the with the rest
of the attire on stage.
I love that picture.
Like I say, at this point the
festival was starting to run
out of gas and more -- starting
to run out of gas culturally
and more importantly it
was running out of money.
They were continuing to plow
money into the promotion,
and the promulgation of folk
music, and folk traditions.
But the same kind of
money wasn't coming
in because you weren't getting
Bob Dylan, you got Joan Baez
that year, but for the most
part you didn't have Joan Baez.
And the other thing is that the
festival was getting too big
for Newport.
Newport at the time
had about 30,000 people
and the total attendance,
obviously there would
be some repeaters,
but the total attendance
for the festival in 1967
or '68, I believe was 70,000.
You had people sleeping
on the beach.
You had people sleeping
on people's front lawns
and people's porches.
This was -- and not in
an invited sense either.
The -- some people
in Newport loved it
because they didn't have
Airbnb at the time but they,
that's essentially
what they did.
They rented out rooms
in their houses.
But for the most
part it was a --
it was becoming a massive
headache for Newport itself
and that became a -- well,
just became a huge collection
of bad vibes all around.
The same process happened
at the Jazz Festival.
In 1970 they canceled
the Newport Folk Festival
and they were going
-- there was going
to be a very small 1971
Newport Folk Festival
but there was a riot at, again,
at the 1971 Jazz Festival
which Dionne -- it reached a
peak while Dionne Warwick was
singing, What the
World Needs Now.
[ Laughter ]
They trashed the stage,
they trashed the piano.
People invaded -- again,
it was people invading
from the outside.
And there -- and at that
point, Newport voted
to eject both festivals.
So Newport -- so the
festivals left Newport in 1971.
Around the mid-'80s,
there was a resurgence
in singer/songwriter folk
music, which you can argue,
is one of the many arguments,
if it's by a singer/songwriter,
is it really folk music?
Is it only folk music
if it's passed
down from one unnamed
Appalachian songwriter
to another?
These are open -- these are --
well, I don't know if they're
open questions anymore,
but I certainly get -- I
certainly still hear plenty
of opinions on both
sides of that.
This is Tom Rush.
In 1984, he made an important
discovery that had resonance
to the revival of the
Newport Folk Festival.
He did an annual Christmas show
at I believe it was
the Channel in Boston.
And he realized -- he
started that in the late '70s,
and by the early '80s,
he realized that attendance was
kind of falling off the table.
He realized that
people weren't coming
out to see the show anymore.
And at the same time, this
marketing student came to him
and said, "Listen, can I do a
marketing questionnaire your --
at your next Christmas show?"
And he said, "Market --
" He said, "I don't know
about a market -- all right.
Sure. Fine.
Do what you want."
So he found out, but -- and he
said, you know, at the middle
of -- you know, in the middle
of the show at the intermission,
people were scribbling like
it was a test in school.
He said he loved it.
But he actually found out from
that that his fans were --
had, for lack of a
better word, grown up.
They were doctors,
they were lawyers,
they were professional people.
And he had the insight --
well, instead of
staying at the channel
or going someplace smaller and
going fewer and fewer nights,
he said, "I'm going to rent
out freaking Symphony Hall."
He said, "People don't want to
go to a dingy place like the --
" The Channel is terrible.
It's not there anymore.
I'm glad. "People want to --
you know, my fans want
to go someplace --
they have a couple
of extra dollars.
They're still out there."
You know, he was being told
there's no more audience
for your music and he said,
you know, "This is ridiculous.
You know, this is the same
generation that I grew up with."
And he said, "If --
they haven't all died.
It would be in the papers."
So he rented out Symphony Hall
and he sold out Symphony Hall.
So he went from not being able
to fill two shows at a capacity
of 400 per show to selling
out Symphony Hall which was
about just short of 2,000.
So that's when he realized,
something is going on here
and a number of people involved
with the Newport Folk
Festival realized
that something was
going on here as well.
And that's when they decided
to revive the festival.
At the same time, the city of
Newport was going through a lot
of changes and they realized
that they needed
large tourist events
and they were better
able to handle them.
And they also negotiated --
you know, the festival now,
it has to be in the daytime.
It has to be at Ford Adams,
which is on a peninsula.
The shows have to be
over by seven o'clock.
The attendance is
capped at 10,000.
It became a very
different festival
with a very different crowd.
But there were enough people
together to revive it and that's
when the music changed again.
This is Bob Jones.
He started as a volunteer
in 1963 and he, like I said,
he was one of the people who
traveled through the South,
scouting out talent and
interviewing, finding musicians.
You know, in the pre-internet
days, it was just very --
much more difficult to
say, "Let's find some --
let's find a pan pipes
player in Alabama."
Or, "Let's find some
black Cajun musicians.
Not Creole musicians.
Black Cajun musicians."
This was -- you know,
this was a difficult thing
when you couldn't just
sort of like look it up,
when you couldn't Google things.
But he had been a
singer/songwriter himself
and he sort of became
the third native guide
to the folk world
for George Wein.
And he'd brought that sound --
he brought the more modern
singer/songwriter sound.
He also expanded the
definition of folk music.
You know, a lot of people were
a little bit -- like, Los Lobos,
Robert Cray, do they
really fit into this?
But I found that Mike
Seeger once wrote --
and this was back
in the mid-'60s.
Mike Seeger, Pete Seeger's
half-brother, said, you know,
we want to keep the festival
within the bounds of performers
who fit in the -- I'm
trying to remember now.
The -- what we think of as
the -- has something to do --
have some connection with
the traditions of folk music.
And those word some
connections mean a lot
and they can mean a lot
of different things.
And he used that and
he used that to sort
of grow the popularity
of the festival
and to expand the
definition of folk music.
And one of the things
he did, as well,
was to consult his
daughter and her friends,
because they were
a new generation
and they were listening to music
that he didn't know
anything about.
Perfect example.
>> You want me to --
[ Music ]
>> Rick Massimo: So
the Indigo Girls,
they played at Newport
nine years
out of 10, I believe it was.
I believe it was 1988
or '89 to 1998, 1999.
They headlined each time.
They were by far the most
popular act at the festival.
They once -- and they
loved the festival as well.
Amy Ray once told me that
actually her favorite moments
from the Newport Folk
Festival weren't about playing.
They were about hearing
other people play.
They were about hearing -- they
were about her family coming
and being able to relax
and see old friends
and hear old friends.
And not everybody who
was a long-time attendee
of Newport felt that way because
a lot of their fans would sort
of helicopter in, so to
speak, for their set,
and then helicopter back out
and sort of push their way
to the front at the same time.
So it was a little bit of a --
you know, there was a little bit
of a schism there
but they were --
there's no doubt that they were
one of the most popular acts
at the festival for many years
and they expanded the
definition of folk music.
And they were one of the --
you know, they were one
of the main female artists
in the history of the festival.
So they sort of expanded the
definition of who could play
at the festival and who
could draw an enormous crowd
at the festival.
>> Who was that singing?
>> That was the Indigo Girls.
>> Oh yeah.
I thought so.
Right.
>> Now, this is George Wein.
He's the set -- he's
second from the right.
His wife, Joyce, is
second from the left
and that is Pops Staples
and the Staple Singers.
When George and Joyce
Wein got married in 1959,
their marriage was
illegal in 19 states.
And one of the things he
told me that he wanted to do
with the folk festival was to --
the idea that it was an activist
festival was not an accident.
You know, I asked
him about that.
He told me some of the
moments that happened in terms
of relations between groups
of people from Alabama and,
you know, black performers
from South Carolina
and white performers
from Alabama.
And he said that these were
very beautiful moments.
And I said, "You knew
what you were doing.
You made these moments
happen, didn't you?"
And he said, "Well, yeah, I did.
We kind of had to
do that if we wanted
to be what we wanted
to represent."
He explained to me that
the jazz festival was --
that's where you demonstrate
an integrated world
and the folk festival is
where you agitate for one.
And one of my favorite stories
that he ever told me was
about the founding of
the New Orleans Jazz
and Heritage Festival.
They invited him down there
and the first time that they --
the first time they invited him
to create a festival, they said,
you know, so we'll
have one side of the --
we'll have one side of the
field for the white audience
and another side for
the black audience.
We'll just have a
rope in the middle.
And he said, "Well,
you can't do that.
I mean, first of all, I've got
-- I mean, you know, I've --
you're asking me to bring in
Duke Ellington and these giants
of jazz and they have
integrated bands.
And they have contracts.
They won't play for
segregated audiences.
They said, "Well, all right."
They actually huddled over it.
And he said, you know, they're
trying to figure out a way
around their own laws.
This is really strange.
But finally they couldn't.
They said, "Well, we'll
try again in a few years."
They tried again in a few years
and then they found out --
then they -- there was
another incident of segregation
in New Orleans over combinations
for football players
at an All Star game.
And they said, "Well, I guess
we're just not ready for this."
And a couple years after
that, they said, "Okay.
I think we're ready
and we're going
to start a New Orleans Jazz
and Heritage Festival."
And they had somebody
else run it.
And George Wein said, "Well,
why did you pick somebody else
to run this festival?"
And they said, "Well, your
wife's black and we can't --
you know, we're just not
ready for that here."
And a year later, after
the festival had been kind
of disastrous, they
invited him back
and said, "Well, yeah, sure.
Come on down and
run the festival."
And he said, "What
happened to the other guy?"
"Well, don't worry
about the other guy."
And one of the things
he said was, you know,
"I don't change -- " Well, let
me start by saying, he said,
"I never wanted to be a rebel.
I didn't want to live
outside of society.
I wanted respect
like my father had.
He was a doctor.
He had respect.
I wanted respect.
I've accomplished things.
I'm a businessman.
I want -- you know, I want
that kind of respect."
And he said, "I wasn't --
I didn't marry Joyce because I
wanted to rebel against society.
I married Joyce because that's
who I wanted to be with."
And he said, "I don't compromise
who I am but at the same time,
I don't tell people
that they're wrong.
They have to find out for
themselves that they're wrong
and they'll find out."
And I thought that that
was -- I loved that story.
It's one of my favorite
stories that George has told me
and it's kind of -- it's one
of the centers of the book,
I think, is one of the -- you
know, it's one of the things
that drove me to write about
the festival in the first place.
So by about 2009,
this is Tom Morello.
He played there in 2009 as --
in his persona as
the Nightwatchman.
And this is -- these
are the Avett brothers
and this was another evolution
in the sound of folk music.
Sorry.
[ Music ]
Right. That didn't cut
off when it was supposed
to be, but never mind.
The Avett Brothers, in 2006
I believe it was, they --
the Newport Folk
Festival had one
of its least auspicious
bookings ever.
That was Jimmy Buffett.
He said at the time
that he had come
up a young singer/songwriter in
Cambridge and that he was going
to do a show that
reflected that.
And I think a lot of people,
including myself, thought, well,
all right, I mean, you know,
Margaritaville is kind of a --
you know, it's actually a sad
song if you think about it.
This could actually work.
Yeah, no, it didn't work.
He came there with
his entire band.
He sort of blew the doors
out of the place and --
but an interesting
thing happened.
Again, there's another situation
where all his fans kind
of helicoptered in to see him.
And everyone else
made for the exits.
But when they did, they went
past the Avett Brothers.
They weren't supposed to
be playing at the time
but there had been a rain delay
so they were still playing.
And people went crazy over them.
They were completely -- they
thought they were heading
to the parking lot but
they stopped at the tent
and the crowd just sort of
swelled and swelled and swelled.
And one of my friends,
who covered the festival
for the Newport Daily News,
asked some of the young
people there, "How did you --
I never heard of these guys.
They're great but I
never heard of them.
How did you find
out about them?"
And he said, well, you
know, this -- the Internet.
Their website's -- their
music's all over the Internet.
So that was a new sort of -- to
me, that's sort of a new form
of word of mouth, that sort of
spreads the word about artists
that older people such as
myself don't know about.
And to me that's a continuation
of the kind of folk music --
the folk tradition that's there.
Now, this is the 2009 festival.
I'm going quick because
we are almost out of time.
I am -- this was
the 2009 festival,
the 50th anniversary festival.
George Wein had sold the
-- after his wife died,
George Wein sold his
operations to a startup company
who lasted a couple years before
they went completely broke.
And with three months
until the 50th anniversary
of the Newport Folk Festival,
there was no festival.
So they had to bang up
something very quickly
without a lot of money.
And Colin Meloy of the
Decembrists told me
that he had been told, you know,
his agent told him, "We don't --
we have no idea whether
they're going
to actually be able to pay you."
And he said, "You know,
I don't actually care."
The point was to celebrate the
Newport Festival and that's
when a lot of people realized --
found out how important that
festival had been to a lot
of people who are
still alive and kicking
and making new music today.
A lot of people -- a lot
of young people who
are still active.
And, you know, they may be
talking about, you know,
the '80s festival and, you know,
they sort of know the history
of the '60s festival and in a
way what the festival did was
turn that history from sort
of an albatross into a --
into something that
they celebrate
and that they recreate.
And at this time,
one of the people
from that startup operation,
his name is Jay Sweet,
he sort of became the fourth
native guide to folk music.
And one of his big
tenants was that just
because you started off
playing electric guitar in a bar
to people who are drinking beer,
you aren't necessarily less
of a folk artist than someone
who started playing to --
an acoustic guitar to people
who were drinking coffee.
[ Music ]
Okay. So that was
Alynda Lee Segarra
and Hurray for the Riff Raff.
They played there last year.
It's a -- superficially,
it's a very different sound.
It's all electric.
You have those very
'80s-sounding keyboards.
But to me, the lyric of the song
and the spirit of the song is --
I feel very -- I sense a very
blues influence there and I --
to me, that's an
example of the connection
that artists still have with --
that's part of that connection
Mike Seeger was talking about
and it's the connection that
artists of today still have
with the artists who we think
of as undeniably folk music
whereas we think it's maybe some
sort of different thing now.
And I will just wrap up with,
this is the finale
of the 2015 festival.
It was the 50th anniversary
of Bob Dylan going electric.
And so we have -- what we
have here is -- these are --
the point I'm trying to make
at the end is that these --
this is music that
was -- these are --
they're playing songs that
were not considered folk music
at the time.
But if you have this many people
singing a song that everyone --
that they didn't write and
that everyone knows, well,
that's folk music right there.
This happens to be Rainy
Day Women number 12
and 35, I believe it is.
And everybody knows it, and
if you were there, I mean,
this is a folk music moment.
It wasn't -- you know,
and so was Maggie's Farm.
That's on the left
hand microphone there,
that's the guy from Dawes.
Taylor Goldsmith from Dawes
and he's playing the guitar
that Bob Dylan played in 1965.
And this is -- you know, to me,
that's a folk music moment and,
you know, one of the things I
say in the book is that we think
of this as going through -- as
these very discreet periods,
but when you really look at
them, what you actually have,
I think, is one conversation
that is stretched
out over a lifetime.
So thank you and I'll
take any questions.
[ Applause ]
Yes?
>> Okay. Well [inaudible] when
you mentioned that [inaudible]
and so [inaudible]
and it definitely goes
[inaudible] have continued
because you have the
[inaudible] over there
and just fast forwarding
[inaudible] this whole thing is
now there are all kinds
of [inaudible] going
on with people taking
[inaudible] and basing it
on [inaudible] or, you know,
bluegrass meets brazil
meats funk.
All kinds of things like that.
And is it folk?
Is it world?
Does it even matter?
It is connected to
a tradition even
if it sounds rather different
from what somebody [inaudible]
>> Rick Massimo: Well, yeah.
And one of the things I --
one of the things I like
to point out, and I pointed
out in the book, is that
I think as soon as you --
I think as soon as you invent --
as soon as they invented
records,
this was going to happen.
>> Yeah.
>> Rick Massimo: I
mean, once you --
you know, once you learn
songs from somewhere other
than your dad, you were going
to learn songs from people other
than the people you
grew up with.
And so this was going to happen.
Yes?
>> Thank you for your insights.
I [inaudible] like the fact
that you have this
[inaudible] both festivals
in Newport [inaudible] festival
and [inaudible] festival.
And [inaudible] your book.
And you mentioned that
there was [inaudible]
for the program festival the
jazz festival [inaudible] I
guess the [inaudible] but then
throughout the [inaudible]
series, a lot of [inaudible]
or at least the folk festival
[inaudible] see the folk
festival too?
And then okay well what -- with
these wealthy families there,
how does [inaudible] involve
[inaudible] why was there not
money [inaudible] and why
were they not also helping
to fund the festival?
>> Rick Massimo: The people in
the -- the wealthy people --
>> Yeah.
>> Rick Massimo: Were not
benefitting from the festival
or at least they
didn't think they were.
They -- this -- these
were their summer houses
and they were there
for peace and quiet.
The business people of
Newport really liked it.
The people who had an extra room
to rent out, they
really liked it.
Now, of course, in Newport,
there was kind of a --
after the Gilded Age,
there was kind of a --
an exodus from Newport and
so that's why you had --
you know, you had empty mansions
and you had people who needed --
you had regular people who
needed and a regular city
who needed tourism and
that sort of thing.
But yeah. No.
The wealthy people -- honestly,
the jazz festival was a one-off.
Not a one-off obviously
but you know what I mean.
It was a unique set of
circumstance is what I'm saying.
Elaine Lorillard was bored.
She was kind of the black
sheep of Newport society
and I honestly think she --
you know, she liked jazz.
She and her husband
went to Storyville a lot
and that's how they
met George Wein.
But she -- people who knew
her tell me that, yeah, she --
there was definitely part of it
-- part of her that just wanted
to piss Newport society off
and that's why she
started the seed money
for the jazz festival.
Yes?
>> I've been involved
in a program
in the Washington Folk Festival
for the last about 30 years now.
And so we've gone through
a lot of the same kind
of struggles that I heard.
And I actually kind
of agreed to hear --
I didn't know that the Newport
Festival had actually not
happened a few years but we
30 years [inaudible] run.
But I -- you know, in terms
of what's [inaudible]
we've had a lot
of evolution [inaudible]
let's be more modern.
And but there have been
others that have served
on that committee over the
years who are, you know,
who should be [inaudible]
and that's it, you know?
But what I wanted to say is
we do audition a lot of groups
and to your point, you
know, there's a lot of views
and things when we do
a singer/songwriter.
And how you define
that tradition.
And, you know, my [inaudible]
definition was it's kind
of like [inaudible].
You can't really [inaudible]
but I know that when I hear it.
And I think that, you
know, is about as close
as you can get, you know?
>> Rick Massimo: Two things that
people told me or that I read
that I think really inform that.
One was that, you
know, in the program
for the first Newport
Folk Festival,
Pete Seeger wrote a list
of made out, you know,
a definition of folk music.
And it said, let's see,
no Bel Canto singing,
no notes on paper, no songs
that were written
specifically to be hits.
And I'm reading -- it was
a longer list than that.
But I remember reading
it and thinking,
"This list is no,
no, no, no, no."
And I thought, well, once
you start talking about --
everybody who starts
defining folk music starts --
in my experience starts talking
about what folk music isn't.
And I feel like once
you stop talking
about what folk music isn't and
start talking about what it is,
it becomes a lot
harder to define
and a lot more stuff
comes into it.
The other one, you know,
it jives with what I said
about we shall overcome.
Dar Williams, I believe
it was, said, "To me,
what makes folk music
is the audience."
And, you know, an audience
that's really listening
and that's letting the
music affect their lives,
I think that's part
of the definition
of folk music as well.
And the other thing I should
point out is that the --
I was rushing there at the end,
but the Newport Folk Festival is
as popular now as its ever been.
I don't know that they'd ever
get 70,000 people but they --
their audience is
limited to 10,000 people
and they have a three-day
festival and it sells
out before the acts
are announced.
People buy the tickets
just because they know.
They know it's going
to be really good.
In fact, Jay Sweet told
me that they've toyed
with never announcing the acts.
You buy the ticket and
then you just show up
and you see what you see.
There are some good
reasons not to do that.
You know, essentially
the smaller acts,
the lesser-known acts
would like to be able
to tell people that
they're there.
But it's -- there are reasons --
there are interesting
reasons for it.
And so to me, you know, and
this is also in the book,
but the thing about
English ballad singers --
that's great but there's
probably somewhere else
to hear them.
You know, that was one of
the things that happened
to the Newport Festival in
the '90s is that so many
of these acts, between
small venues
for the quote unquote real
folk singers and casinos
for bigger acts like
Mary Chapin Carpenter
or Los Lobos or Alison Krauss.
You could see a lot of these
acts other places, so there had
to be some other -- there had
to be some other kind of appeal.
So are we --
>> Elizabeth Peterson: Well,
thank you very much
[inaudible] has some copies
of the book outside he's going
to be selling and signing
and [inaudible] conversation.
So thank everybody for coming.
We have another Botkin lecture
same time next week also
on Wednesday.
Barry Burgie [assumed spelling]
and Tom Pitch will be talking
about a project to photograph
and document National
Heritage award winners
and it's going to
be a great show.
So thank you and thanks for
coming and thank you, Rick.
[ Applause ]
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.