Podcasts Culture Please Explain (The Leonard Lopate Show) American Folk Music, as Told by Eli Smith and Jerron 'Blind Boy' Paxton

American Folk Music, as Told by Eli Smith and Jerron 'Blind Boy' Paxton

Published: April 8, 2016, 4 a.m.

What is folk music? Spanning genres, geographical locations, and eras in time, it’s the music of the people. Although American folk music has been around for a long time, you could say it had its biggest explosion in the 1960s in Greenwich Village. In fact, New York has experienced a bit of a folk revival in recent years.

On today's Please Explain, we're exploring folk music with Eli Smith, the co-founder of the Brooklyn Folk Festival, the banjo player for The Downhill Strugglers and the former co-host of The Down Home Radio Show. Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton, a multi-instrumentalist performing at this year's Brooklyn Folk Festival, joins Eli in the conversation. They'll also perform live in our studio! 

Event: The Brooklyn Folk Festival will be held at St. Anne’s Church (157 Montague Street between Clinton and Henry) from April 8th-10th. It will feature 35 bands, workshops and events including an old time string band, freedom songs of the Civil Rights Movement, shape note, country blues and international folk music from Syria and Colombia.