“The modern American folk singer is not found, as you might expect, in the hills of West Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, and like that. His habitat is the big city- New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and occasionally Philadelphia. He lives in the slums, dresses glamorously, and never goes anywhere without his instrument. He gets together with his friends to sing as often and loud as the neighborhood and police will let him.”[1]
During the mid twentieth century, Greenwich Village was a breeding ground for creative intellectuals; rent was cheap, Columbia and New York University were nearby, and there were endless coffeehouses and bars lining Bleecker and MacDougal Street. Such spots came to promote the folk movement that was growing in the heart of Greenwich Village. The bars and clubs such as Café Biazarre, The Bitter End, and The Gaslight were all local spots in which folk musicians came to play, and viewers came to watch, socialize, and critique.
With that, the idea of authenticity became prevalent in the folk scene in Greenwich Village; only the legitimate folk singers were recognized as good musicians. To be seen as a legitimate folk singer, one had to play either the guitar (acoustic, of course), banjo, or washban bass, along with a harmonica. Once a musician became proficient in one or more of these instruments, they then had to master the act of writing a folk song. Since folk is so heavily rooted in tradition, only the folk musicians that recognized those that came before them, and honored the work of their predecessors were deemed as legitimate. In her book, Suze Rotolo recalls the time when Bob Dylan first came into the folk music scene, “Bob called himself Blind Boy Grunt as a tribute to, and playful take on, the nicknames of the blues and jazz greats who preceded the young white pretenders.”
This strive for authenticity would lead the folk movement to influence more than just the style of music being played at the time. Instead, the ideas of folk permeated down to all aspects of life. People in Greenwich Village in the late 1950s, early 1960s not only listened to folk music, but dressed like the folk musicians did, wrote magazines about folk music, hung out on MacDougal street at the bars and Izzy Young’s Folklore Center any chance they had, went to Washington Square Park every Sunday to hear the folk musicians play, etc. They lived and breathed folk. Greenwich Village played and invaluable role in the process of building up the folk movement, and letting it grow into a way of life that would lend a hand in shaping the history of the United States.
[1] “How To Recognize A Folksinger,” Gardyloo!, April 1959, 10.
