President’s Welcome
Some scholars say that the Iliad and Odyssey were originally an oral tradition set to music and that the stories were passed down from generation to generation, probably for hundreds of years, before Homer wrote them down around the eighth century BCE.
The folk tradition, the transferring of song and history orally through the centuries, has obviously been with us a long time. Often authors have been unknown and works have been produced by the "uneducated" classes. The themes covered are various but not so different from those covered by artists today. If you had to summarize the themes as a whole, one might say that they all cover every aspect of the human condition imaginable.
There are historic accounts of train wrecks, mining disasters, outlaws, calamities and probably just about any kind of disaster that has happened to man. On the other hand, some contemporary folk artists have taken the folk genre into new territories and penned their homage to a winter coat (the Roches), winter cows (John Gorka), or the glamor of indoor mall shopping (Patty Larkin). No subject is taboo. Delight, fascination, and high-spirited expression is demonstrated which maintains our joy and interest.
The Princeton Folk Music Society sprung from a "rebirth" of folk music in the 1960's. Our long term members tell us that there were informal folk music groups gathering around Princeton about 1963. It was probably inevitable that the folk fever eventually consolidated into organized groups. For us, that happened in 1965 with the founding of our Society.
In the spirit of folk, it's now our turn to pass the torch of tradition to younger generations. To that end, we offer a monthly concert series from September to May. Membership includes the access to our "monthly sings" where we, as folk have done for millenia, socialize and share new and old musical favorites with one another.
If this has any interest to you, please join us. Essentially, you might say, we're a small collective of the family of man gathering to celebrate our heritage. You are all welcome to join us.
Richard Titus
President, Princeton Folk Music Society
