A Commentary on “The Last Verse” Essay

The article titled â€Å"The Last Verse â€Å"by Burkhard Bilger that appeared in the New Yorker on April 28, 2008 basically talks about the hardships and sacrifices that one encounters if he seeks to pursue folk music, the kind of music that passes from generation to generation.   Interestingly, the author tells the story based on the experiences of   Ã‚  two individuals who were driven to seek folk music by differing motives: one for inspiration and the other for preservation. Both Lance Ledbetter and Art Rosenbaum are avid fans of folk music but Ledbetter was more attracted to it due to its obscurity. Rosenbaum believed that folk music is part of the traditional American culture and wanted to preserve it while Ledbetter appreciated the inspiration that folk music can trigger in music artists. But no matter how different their motives had been, both had personally witnessed and experienced the hardships and sacrifices that each had to go through just to obtain and produce it. This is mainly because folk music ,in its purest, unadulterated , traditional form are sung only by old folks ( using crude , ordinary or unlikely instruments in some cases)   who live in the most isolated places one can imagine , a place where technological advancement had not yet   made a deep impression.    And when they get to find the desired old folk singer, they   have to deal with their eccentricities (perhaps due to old age) and worse of all, when they do record an album they have to be prepared for low sales but may   be consoled by rave reviews with University archives as avid fan( Bilger, 2008, pp. 52- 61). Nevertheless, the story rightly told in print what most people knew or felt   all along, that folk music is a thing of the past   or that in the face of technological advancement and modern taste, it just had to remain in the background if not disappear altogether. Like all other works or art, music had to evolved, and along with its evolution is the incorporation of technologies that can easily adjust sound recordings with the tip of the finger.   In other words, when one listens to the music one cannot truly appreciate its originality or the context it was made because it had been improved, edited and transferred with the help of technology, removing most of its human touch in the process. Bilger relates that in original recorded folk music one can either hear â€Å"the hollow thump of the artist’s palm against the guitar†¦ the intake of his breath†¦the murmur of voices in the background or the clacking of pool balls† (Bilger, 2008, pp. 61-62). The difficulties of obtaining recorded music unsullied by modern technology are just proof of the reality that folk music, in its unadulterated form, is closely tied to the past.   Folk music somehow symbolizes life in the past when it was more relaxed, pure, no nonsense and perhaps carefree. Folk music, like other antique artifacts, are man’s last attempt to hold on to the kind of life what our forefathers had known for thousands of years , generations after generations, before life changed so   quickly   the moment man invented modern technology. Since folk music is â€Å"the sound and spirit of the forgotten world† it is no wonder then that the new generation did not appreciate it as much as those who had gone before us (Bilger, 2008, p 57).   Modern music had many genres and folk music can still be part of it but at this time it is very much improvised, revised, edited and often than not just as source of inspiration presented with all the embellishments that modern technology can muster for commercialization. Folk music alone in its purity just cannot thrive in our world, like what Ledbetter had done, it had to be repackaged beautifully to make it to hopefully sing again.   The title of Bilger’s article had a subtitle â€Å"Is there any folk music still out there?†.   Ledbetter and Rosenbaum found out that there still was through the old folks they painstakingly sought but as these old folk music carriers die, the next generation will just have to settle themselves to hearing folk music that are   compiled   and preserved in University Archives for it is there that the oral tradition of transferring music finally ends. Question : Why is it difficult for folk music to thrive in modern times? Work Cited Bilger, Burkhard. â€Å"The Last Verse: Is there any folk music still out there?† The New Yorker 28 April 2008: 52-63.