The American folk revival began in around 1940, at which time Alan Lomax was regularly

broadcasting Folk music of America, and teaching thousands of children the

This progression of Folk music was documented by various Folklorists, most notably John
& Alan Lomax who contributed 700 linear feet of manuscripts, 10,000 sound recordings, 6000 graphic
images, and 6000 moving images. http://www.loc.gov/folklife/lomax/ And as Ronald D Cohen writes in
Rainbow Quest The popular dissemination of folk music came most readily through recordings I think this
shows how much the actual field recordings made by the Folklorists of the early 20 th century influenced the
likes of Woody Guthrie. Furthermore John Lomax can be credited with finding Hudson Ledbetter, AKA
Leadbelly who arrived in New York with him on the 31 st December 1934. Pete Seeger was naturally
influenced by what he saw, and in 1950 he recorded Goodnight Irene with The Weavers, who made it the
most popular song of the year. In that same year Red Channels: Communist influence on radio and television
cited Pete Seeger 13 times which terminated the Weavers career, and drove Folk singing underground for most
of the decade (Cantwell, 1996)

Even though Folk music in the 1950s was widely boycotted by the media, due to political
differences between the far left and right wing parties, one artefact remained to give the Folk
musicians of the next decade a resource to base all their music, Harry Smiths Anthology of
American Folk Music. This series of recordings collect by the aforementioned Folklorists of
the early 20th century, gave musicians such as Bob Dylan a chance to hear music that was not
indigenous to their own communities, artists such as The Carter Family could now be heard
across the country, allowing musicians to hear a wide range of styles and find inspiration
much more readily. Robert Cantwell describes it as (Folk Musics) Enabling Document
its musical constitution (R. Cantwell, Smiths Memory Theatre)

Following this formerly unprecedented availability of Folk Music, in around 1957, Izzy Young opened his first
Folklore Centre on MacDougal street Greenwich Village New York, this was an extremely important place in
the N.Y. folk scene, and Dylan described it as The Citadel of American folk music (Young and Barretta,
2013) he even wrote a song about the place which he titled Talking Folklore Centre. Furthermore, not only
did Izzy Young produce Dylans first concert at Carnegie Chapter Hall in 1961, but he was also instrumental in
the Washington Square protest of April 1961, which would later be referred to as the First protest action of the
1960s