DON'T YOU DARE GATEKEEP FOLK MUSIC
So, I don't post on here very often. And when I do, it's pretty much always about Star Wars. This post is gonna be something completely different. And it's probably gonna sound a little self-righteous, but I feel strongly that I'm right.
I've been listening to Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and lots of other people associated with the mid-20th century American folk revival for my entire life (I didn't discover Joan Baez until high school though because my parents think her singing is boring). That music is at the center of my whole music taste that I've developed over the years. With my parents both being huge Dylan fans (they had Bob Dylan quotes in their wedding vows), that music has been engrained in my life since the beginning. And I know the same is true for a lot of other people, and that this music is just as important to the countless more who discovered it later in life.
If you've been on the internet at any point during the last few weeks, you probably know what I'm about to start talking about. I saw A Complete Unknown on New Year's Day, and it was much better than I'd expected. I've already posted an absurdly long review of the movie on Letterboxd, so I'm not gonna bother telling y'all my opinions about the movie itself (which are numerous, strong, and largely irrational). Instead, I want to talk a bit about some of the broader social responses I've seen to the movie.
I was thinking about those responses before I'd even left the theater, 'cause I have wanted more people to listen to '60s folk music (and especially Joan Baez) for years. People definitely thought I was kinda weird in high school for knowing so much about Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, bringing them up all the time in my history and English classes, and posting about them on Instagram. A lot of my friends hated Bob's voice and I could hardly find anyone who was interested in Joan Baez except as a name to mention in history exams about the Civil Rights Movement. So I genuinely love that there's a popular movie that's exposing more people to that music and giving those previously exposed a greater appreciation for it.
But, holy shitsnacks, I've never come so close to being a gatekeeping asshole before. I was off TikTok for the second half of 2024 for a variety of reasons that don't bear going into, but went on that app again a few days ago. And, naturally, my 'for you' page was slowly taken over by folk music content. As much as I've loved seeing how much more attention Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Pete Seeger seem getting than when I was on TikTok before, this sort of explosion in the popularity of something that used to mark me as a weird kid is definitely new to me. I've experienced the urge to prove that I'm a fan of something before, but never with something that has this much emotional meaning to me. And I'll admit that I have now fallen as far as using my vinyl collection to prove that I was a fan before the movie (which . . . I think my perceived need to quantify how much I like things is part of why I collect vinyl records anyway, but whatever). Because, let me tell you, with all the good people who love folk music, there are also a few assholes.
In the past, I feel like those assholes have mostly been a small group of older fans. But now I've started encountering people my age who are suddenly being assholes about the same old people music that I've loved for years. Maybe those people were there all along, but they seem to have become more prominent now. Like, I've seen someone claiming that men shouldn't listen to Joan Baez--a claim I didn't want to take seriously, but I honestly can't tell. And I've seen so, so many people saying things along the lines of "no one loves Bob Dylan as much as I do; I was a fan before the movie". And that sorta thing reminded me of how shitty it feels to be on the receiving end of gatekeeping. I don't have much reason to be deeply affected by the gatekeeping because I've been a fan for so long and I've put up with the gatekeeping done by older fans, but that must feel like shit for people who are just now being introduced to the music.
It's gonna be impossible for me to express any of this without sounding obnoxiously preach-y, but here goes. How much you love something can't be quantified, so can't compare it to how much someone else loves that thing. And if it's not something you created, you shouldn't try to control who can enjoy it. Folk music is for everyone--we're all the folk. Edward Norton as Pete Seeger in the movie literally talks about bringing the music to new people. That's what it's all about, and this movie has done a very good job at sharing the music with a lot of new people all at once. The community that exists around this music has always been overwhelmingly positive (despite the presence of some assholes, including Bob Dylan himself), and I still have a lot of hope that the positivity will live through this explosion in popularity.
And I hope that this movie will start people down the same path I started down when I was ~15, and lead to more people listening to Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons, Townes Van Zandt, John Prine, Phil Ochs (whose song There But For Fortune was only briefly featured in the movie), all the weird '50s music that inspired Bob and Joan, and everything else that was touched by the folk revival. The more music everyone listens to, the more we'll understand each other.
Anyway, here's a little picture of Bob and Joan that I saw on Pinterest the other day. I hadn't seen this picture before, and it was the first time in probably over a year that I'd found a new picture of them together. It was uploaded to Pinterest by someone called 9ddana, but that's all I know.
