people are asked
the origin of their music, the usual reply is "My grandsir larnt me this
fiddle tune," or "My Granny larnt me this song-ballet."

Since mountain people have brought their music out of the coves and
hollows for the world to hear through their Singing Gathering and
Festivals, the nation is fast becoming aware of the importance of folk
music in the life of Americans today. Great singers have taken up the
simple songs of our fathers. "Wipe out foes of morale with music," says
Lucy Monroe, New York's "Star Spangled Banner Soprano," director of
patriotic music for RCA-Victor, when she sang on September 11, 1941,
before the National Federation of Music Clubs in New York. "Let's make
certain that when the present crisis is passed, music will have done its
full job of defense," she said enthusiastically. The singer urged
federation members to become soldiers of music. "Let us enlist together
to form a great army of music!" she urged. Miss Monroe was commissioned
by Mayor LaGuardia to devote her efforts to the cause of music for the
Office of Civilian Defense. Whereupon she outlined a four-point program:
1. To visit large plants and industrial centers connected with defense
work to give musical programs and to suggest that the plants begin each
day's activities with playing the Star-spangled Banner--to tell the men
what they are working for. 2. To conduct community sings in large
cities. 3. To collect phonograph records for the boys in army camps,
establishing central depots in every locality in the country. 4. To give
talks, with song illustrations, on the history of the United States of
America in colleges, high schools, women's clubs, and music clubs.

Though some may see folk song, the basis of all music, endangered by
motion pictures, Kurt Schindler, authority on ancient European customs
and collector of folk music in other lands, believes the danger lies in
another direction. "The young students, the modernists, in their great
desire to keep up with the times wish to kill the old things."

All the forces working in America to preserve folk song should share
Kurt Schindler's fears. The press is cognizant of the farflung effort
throughout the land. The _Atlanta Journal_ (September 19, 1928) says,
"The collection and preservation of mountain folk music is a singularly
gracious work and one of rare value to history. Collected in its natural
environment, it is perforce authentic both in tune and idiom, and
sin