Ken Ficara

Last night’s tribute concert to the Friends Of Old-Time Music at Town Hall was a spectacular evening. FOTM was founded in the early 1960s by musicologist Ralph Rinzler, and sponsored a series of concerts in Greenwich Village that introduced people like Doc Watson, Jean Ritchie, Mississippi John Hurt and others to New York City audiences. While many of them were musicians themselves (bands like the New Lost City Ramblers, the Greenbriar Boys and many others came out of that scene) they were more than generous to their influences, often donating their own performances in order to get people to see the legends they’d learned from.

The concert was part of a conference sponsored by Brooklyn College (my alma mater!), through their Institute for Studies in American Music, which featured panel discussions during the afternoon at the CUNY Graduate Center. In addition to the stars onstage, the audience included a who’s-who of the traditional music scene. Izzy Young, who ran the Greenwich Village Folklore Center, a hangout for all of these musicians as well as people like Bob Dylan, was there. So was Mary Francis Hurt-Wright, John Hurt’s granddaughter who now runs a museum about him, in his hometown of Avalon, Mississippi. Matt Umanov, owner of the guitar store in the Village; Kate Rinzler, Ralph’s wife and biographer, and many others, including Steve Earle, who was sitting about ten seats away from me, clearly thrilled to be there. He leapt to his feet more than once in applause.

"It was exciting to find people from the city who could enjoy the music I cut my teeth on."