Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.
As we all know, ever since LeBron James
left, the only thing significant about Cleveland is Todd Kwait, a
local lawyer who has turned into a quite capable documentarian on
American popular music. One can't quite call him a "rockumentarian"
as he has focused more on the rarely examined folk and jug-band
traditions. Maybe "washboardentarian" will do.
In his latest FOR THE LOVE OF THE
MUSIC: THE CLUB 47 FOLK REVIVAL, co-directed with Rob Stegman,
Kwait answered a question that was so obvious it had just never
occurred to me. Why did folk music, of all things, captivate the
eastern college-campus intelligentsia in the late 1950s? When I went
to college the craze was all reggae all the time - perfectly
understandable when you recognize that pot smoking came as part of
the cultural baggage. Yeah, world peace, Bob Marley, almighty Jah, -
blah blah blah. My university confederates, as I recall, would have
listened to marathons of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir if it gave them
cachet to be stoned all the time.
