WSJ, Clifftop, etc.

[zoukboy]

I just read the article Dan T posted and then sent this to the WSJ editors:

Dear Wall Street Journal Editors,

I just read the following article that was posted to the
rec.music.country.old-time newsgroup and am compelled to write in response.

This article is offensive and ill-informed. No doubt you are hearing from
those people who are apparently misquoted in the article, so I will speak
only to the obvious bias of the writer and that he is apparently affiliated
with two of the people quoted in the article but does not disclose this. I
suggest you read the messages posted to the previously mentioned newsgroup
if you are interested in this.

The thing that really got me, was that he made a joke out of the death of
one festival attendee:

"rain, heat, marauding insects, and the occasional corpse along roadside.
Death is a downer, to be sure,"and"Several hours after the body was hauled
away, 40 or so festivarians..."and"flatfooting past the graveyard, as it
were, taking the mind far away from fallen boomers and the ineffable sadness
of life."

Death is a DOWNER? FESTIVARIANS? FLATFOOTING PAST THE GRAVEYARD? FALLEN
BOOMERS?

For God's sake, can you not see how he belittles these people with his
language? "Downer" is old hippie speak - I doubt he heard that phrase used
at the festival in regards to this unknown man's death. "Festivarians" is
an obvious slight, and attempt to equate festivalgoers with Rastafarians.
And then he suggests that these folks learning to dance are practically
dancing on the deceased's grave and that he was a "fallen boomer."

Also, Mr. Shifflet gives inordinate space to the opinions of Jim Skelding,
who has an obvious axe to grind about Clifftop and Old Time Music. Perhaps
these are really the opinions of Mr. Shifflet? Perhaps this article should
have run on your editorials page for it is not reporting so much as a
thinly-veiled smear of people attending a unique and important musical
gathering.

In the future I hope you can improve your feeble attempts at covering
traditional music. This article is a sad, low benchmark. The good news is
you've nowhere to go but up!

Cordially,
Roger Landes

[steve s]

http://home.comcast.net/~steventrish/ArtisLong.htm
this article about clifftop is on my website....the copyright holder is the
oth, so please don't circulate except as a link. Shifflet read it and seemed
to like it; maybe there is hope....s.

[ssan...@ycst.com]

For whatever its worth, attached is the letter I sent last week after
reading the article. Neither it nor any other letters to the editor on
the topic have seen the light of day, and are probably being filed
under "tempest in a teapot." Maybe if more people respond, the WSJ
will realize that it struck a nerve. Shel Sandler

Your reporter, Dave Shiflett, manages to unfairly caricature two
valuable forms of traditional American music, Bluegrass, which he
implies is played only by drunken rednecks who vote Republican, and old
time music, the aficionados of which he portrays as sandal-wearing
hippies. As a regular attendee at the Appalachian String Band
Festival, including this year's event, it astonishes me that your
reporter got so far off the track and missed the point of Clifftop so
completely. This was a musical event, not a political debate, and a
wonderful one at that; what it has to do with politics escapes me.
Moreover, his overly simplistic characterization of the two musical
cousins ignores their close relationship. In fact, Bluegrass evolved
from old time music, and while it is true that there is more emphasis
in Bluegrass on breaks and instrumental pyrotechnics, there is also a
great deal of complexity and instrumental skill in the playing of old
time music, which apparently escaped his ear. Next time, send someone
to Clifftop who knows something about traditional music and does not
have another agenda, and you will get a more accurate story. Sheldon
Sandler