ABSTRACT
A s a sometimes folksinger, folklorist, and writer on traditionalmusic, I have long been interested in how folk music is judged,not only by those outside the folk world but by its diehard partisans and practitioners. What makes for a “good” folk performance? Do you have to be “one of the folk” to play folk music? I always thought of Josh White’s oft-quoted quip, “I never heard no horse play music” when some questioned why a Jewish, middle-class, suburban born-and-raised musician was playing Irish music on the concertina, as I was doing, or conducting field work recording older musicians. But, paradoxically, the recordings that I made-primarily my recordings of Irish musicians living in Cleveland-were criticized by (some) in the folk community for their lack of “professionalism”: I included performances where musicians made “mistakes” and the recordings sounded like they were made in someone’s basement-which, in fact, they were.
