What do you mean it's not "real" folk?

For a long time my answer to the question "What's the strangest music you have in your collection?" has been Adirondack folk music.  I've grown up in a family with deep roots in the park, meaning that my house has long been filled with Adirondack books, art, boats, and music.  We listen to CDs from our favorite Adirondack artists, and have seen them perform everywhere from historic boat houses to high school auditoriums to meeting halls at summer camps.  They are modern folk singers in the sense that they write some of their own music and perform for a living, but that hadn't made a difference to me until class today, when Professor Hamessley quickly dismissed modern folk songs as belonging to the style but not truly being folk songs.  I understand the difference--yes, the songs hold a different cultural significance--but present-day folk singers in the Adirondacks still are an important part of the folk tradition and don't deserve to be overlooked in our study of the park.

The artist I'm most familiar with and who is one of the most well-known modern day Adirondack folk artists is singer/songwriter Dan Berggren.  Berggren's lengthy discography includes renditions of traditional folk songs, including "Once More A-Lumberin' Go," as well as many original songs.  He is described on his website as "A tradition-based songsmith [who] writes with honesty, humor and a strong sense of place. His songs explore the many dimensions of home, hard-working folks, taking care of our planet and each other" (BerggrenFolk).  Some songs praise the natural beauty of the park, many pay tribute, in the folk tradition, to the stories of the people living in it.  The song "Here's to You," included below, is a ballad that praises Adirondack history and the people that call it "their home forever wild."  Sung in the context of both the history of the settlement of the region and the newer relationship between the inhabitants and the natural, "forever wild" aspect of the park, songs like this one have prompted praise from people like author Bill McKibben, whose quote on Berggren's website reads "Dan is a throwback to the old role of the folk singer  . . . he's articulating things that need to be said right now" (BerggrenFolk).

The female voice joining Berggren on the chorus in this song is Peggy Lynn, another of my favorite Adirondack folk singers.  In addition to many collaborations with Dan Berggren, Lynn has written and performed a series of folk songs that use the traditional format to tell the stories of those who were generally left out of traditional folk songs:  women.  She has written ballads about 15 year old 46 peaks pioneer Esther McComb, explorer "Hitch-Up" Matilda Fielding, abolitionist Mary Brown, historic 46r Grace Hudowalski, hotelier Lydia Smith, and countless others.  Lynn captures the nature of her work in the refrain to her song "Lydia": 

Lydia, I want to tell your story

Lydia--so we'll know

Mountain women can be heroes.

Artists like Dan Berggren and Peggy Lynn, joined by others such as renowned hammered dulcimer player Dan Duggan, rather than being examples of what has been lost in the genre of folk music, are active members of a community that strives to continue to lift up the history of the Adirondacks through song. 

Sources:
BerggrenFolk.  Sleeping Giant Records, 2014.  Web.  4 April, 2016.

Lynn, Peggy, and Sandra Weber.  Breaking Trail:  Remarkable Women of the Adirondacks.  Fleishmanns, NY:  Purple Mountain Press, 2004.  Print.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVf7MTUtJLQ