If you're interested the non consumption-oriented music tradition, you'll do well to check out the Clifftop ["old-time music"] Festival [0]. Basically it is a m

If you're interested the non consumption-oriented music tradition, you'll do well to check out the Clifftop ["old-time music"] Festival [0]. Basically it is a music festival in which the music is made by the attendees, and there are no formally booked or scheduled artists (kind of). A few things that surprised me (I was totally naive going in, just giving a ride to a friend en route to somewhere else): - Old time music has become a little bit of a punk scene. It seems like the young people interested in making music socially are "crust punks", because it's rowdy and free and made for acoustic instruments/voice. "Old people"and "hillbillies" make up the other half of the stereotype categories. The dynamic is interesting because you have old-school christian cultists and dreadlocked/pierced crust kids teaching each other tunes, and (almost) nobody finds any reason for conflict. - I still have songs stuck in my head that I have not heard recorded or played for years and years. Many oral tradition songs are really fucking good, presumably only the most "viral" ones survived. Many of these songs do not have a recording that sounds "right", the only time it sounds the way it crystallizes in a place and time. [0] http://www.wvculture.org/stringband/ http://www.wvculture.org/stringband/