Anne Feeney

Post-2008 Kerrville Folk Festival

FAF: Your recently released, self-produced CD, Dump The Bosses Off Your Back, is a Top Ten Folk DJ pick and it has also put you in the same Top Artist category. What do you think is the main attraction to these songs: the times, the recent high-profile mining accidents (there are four mining songs), a possible upswing in union participation because of the last two-three decades of allowing corporations to run rampant?

ANNE: It wasn’t until I got your email that I discovered that Dump the Bosses Off Your Back was in the Top 10 on the Folk DJ list for April 2008. That’s very heartening, as I really enjoy the shows that these folks do. Most of them put a lot of time and love into planning their shows on specific themes, and the playlists are fabulous. The actual impact or significance of being in the Top 10 is hard to determine. It is gratifying to receive airplay from such a knowledgeable group of folks.

There was also the serendipity of releasing my 20-year-old recording of Colum Sands’ timeless “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing” just as Congress took another pass at FISA (the Bush Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program).

I would love to think that the times, or an upswing in union participation, was responsible for the flurry of interest in my CD... but our music has been so marginalized by the mainstream culture that sometimes I fear for its very survival. I just performed at a very large festival in Sweden, the ‘Peace and Love’ Festival. So many people who heard me perform were really excited, wanting to know “what I called” this kind of music. Acoustic, interactive, storytelling, group singing, satire and political folk used to be a staple at a festival like this. At the 2008 Peace and Love Festival I was unique.

FAF: What do you contribute this to, this odd fracture between the folk and the folk music, and the events affecting the folk?

ANNE: I’m stepping onto thin ice here—and I don’t mean to minimize the contributions of the many scholarly ethno-musicologists who have ‘preserved’ this music for us—but I attribute the fracture to:

A tendency by some so-called folk music purists to literally ‘preserve’ folk music instead of recognizing that it evolves. There is certainly a place for this ‘preserved’ music...but I think it may be largely in academia, where the study of extinct things creates a living for lots of folks (and I personally have a good bit of interest in this music and an affection for its presenters).

Folklorists have generally ostracized purveyors of topical music from folk music. You won’t find it at Smithsonian Folklife on the Mall, or at the National Folk Festival. I don’t know when this started.... Dylan going electric at Newport?

The folk ‘biz’ seems to have decided protest music is ‘pop’ music and has just about completely lost interest in it. Protest singers in the folk genre, such as myself, are now lumped in with ‘singer songwriters.’ That’s a genre that spans everything from teenage girls writing songs about their cats, would-be tin-pan alley writers who despise ‘folk’ music but aren’t successful enough yet to hire the rock/country/pop band that they wish they had – and some true geniuses like Bob Franke, Billy Jonas, Lou and Peter Berryman, Anais Mitchell – who are deeply respectful of folk traditions but are carving brilliant new pathways in acoustic music.

Political song seems to have been consigned to other genres: punk, reggae, rock (Tom Morello and Rage Against the Machine being a prime example), and pop (Pink, Ben Harper).

On top of that, many of the so-called folk performers of this type of music are AWFUL ... assuming that the ‘importance’ of their message eliminates any responsibility on their part to be entertaining, or even competent on their instruments. Artists (and I use the term loosely) like this used to be filtered out by A&R people and never get a label or airplay. Now, anyone with a computer can record 12 songs and burn them onto a CD ... some of which LOOK really professional. If a presenter passes over these dreadful CDs, they are often accused by the artist of being cowardly, or redbaiting, or persecuting them for their politics. Presenters are unlikely to say, “I love your politics, but your music sucks.” Instead, they say things like, “Our audience is too conservative, and doesn’t want to hear political music.” This in effect excludes ALL political artists from that presenter’s stage. Coffeehouse presenters and folk festivals are INUNDATED with awful CDs from artists in all genres ... quality control has just about disappeared ... and the job of presenters is much more complicated than it was before.

FINALLY, there is a disturbing trend among presenters to ‘avoid controversy.’ Right wing groups encourage their members to complain long and loud at any hint of left wing sentiments in any public forum. Since there is no particular ‘right wing’ genre of music, lefties don’t have much to explicitly complain about. No one sings explicitly about the joys of capitalism, or the pleasures of using up a disproportionate share of the world’s resources. Paul Robeson said, “All music is political. The decision not to be political is a political decision.” I think that’s very true. Music that avoids controversy is consciously apolitical.

You may be able to tell that I have given this a lot of thought over the past few years...

Sometimes presenters will come to me and say, “You MUST hear so-and-so’s song about homelessness, or war, or poverty.” I listen to the song and it takes the bold position that homelessness, or war, or poverty is SAD.

One of my favorite quotes is, “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist.” – Don Helder Camara, former Archbishop of Sao Paolo. Songs that give food to the poor are worthwhile in some contexts, but the better songs ask why the poor have no food, and hint at, or offer, an answer. Great political songs should invade our comfort zone and allow us to see the world in new ways.

Joy H. Hance