Folk music has gotten something of a bum rap.

The mere suggestion of the genre often conjures up images of either a rigidly preserved act from a century ago, or the sensitive artiste crooning in a coffeehouse.

That is, it paints a picture of something old and staid or painfully self-absorbed.

Even worse, many people think folk music is just another categorized section of music at the record store.

Too many of us in the industrialized world have lost a sense of what folk music is. In the effort to package it for the masses, it has been rather narrowly defined, and as a result, written off by quite a few people searching for a musical form of self expression. It became easier to substitute pre-packaged and marketed music in lieu of creating music for our special occasions and events.

So, what is folk music? Simply put, it's music done by us regular folks. Folk music has no particular "flavor". It comes in all languages, in all forms, from the soft to the boisterous, from the simple to the complex. Most folks never intended to make folk music. They simply made the music they had learned from their parents, friends and community, modifying as their own tastes, memories and abilities saw fit.

Expensive instruments and formal music education are nice, but absolutely unnecessary. Don't allow the rules to be a distraction.

This is my effort to get us creating music again.