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WELCOME LOCAL AUTHOR AND MUSIC HISTORIAN STEPHANIE P LEDGIN From indigenous music to Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen singing ÒThis Land Is Your LandÓ side-by-side at the pre-inaugural concert for our first African American presidentfolk music has been at the center of AmericaÕs history. Thomas Jefferson wooed his bride-to-be with fiddle playing. Stephen Foster captured the mood of our country in transition. The Carter Family adapted music from across the pond to Appalachia. Paul Robeson carried folk music of many lands to the world stage. Woody GuthrieÕs dust bowl ballads spoke to the common man, while Sixties protest music put folk on the map, following the Kingston TrioÕs hit, ÒTom Dooley.ÓFolk music has evolved with AmericaÕs changing landscape, celebrating its multi-cultural traditions. From Irish step dancers to rap, parlor songs to Dixieland, blues to classical, Discovering Folk Music presents the genre as surprisingly diverse, every bit the product of our national melting pot.Demonstrating continuing relevance of folk music in our everyday liveswhile spotlighting an amazing array of personalitiesthe book provides special emphasis on the folk revival era, when Dylan, Baez, Odetta, and Peter, Paul and Mary sang out and influenced the next generation, including Shawn Colvin, Ani DiFranco, and others. These deep roots pervade with today's artists on the "fringes of folk." Interviews with such legends as Janis Ian, Tom Paxton, Jean Ritchie, and Nora Guthrie, WoodyÕs daughter, add color. Discovering Folk Music is a ground-breaking look at 21st-century folk music in our rapidly changing digital world, family-friendly while ripe for rediscovery by the Woodstock generation.