Elaine Weissman has seen the Southern California folk scene wax and wane. Right now, she said happily, it's on the rise.
"The scene locally is getting 1,000% better," said Weissman, 61, director of the California Traditional Music Society Folk Music Center in Encino Park. "It's really blooming from San Francisco to San Diego."
Weissman points to such signs of vigor as the growing interest in contra dances, a traditional American form of country dancing, and the health of folk organizations, such as Orange County's Living Traditions.
The latest issue of FolkWorks--a Sherman Oaks-based publication about the Greater Los Angeles folk community--bears Weissman out.
Its front page quotes a gibe by drummer Warren Casey of the local Scottish drum and pipe band the Wicked Tinkers, "Don't you know that folk music is illegal in Los Angeles?"
But the paper's calendar of events shows Los Angeles to be a hotbed of folk activity. It lists local concerts featuring every kind of traditional music from Armenian to zydeco, as well as gatherings for people who love the rhythms and intricacies of African, Irish, Scandinavian and a dozen other traditional forms of dance.
Weissman, who lives in Tarzana with husband and fellow folkie Clark Weissman, has been part of the local folk scene almost as long as there has been one.
At Fairfax High School, she recalled, "I joined a bunch of guitar-playing hippies who used to sit on the lawn."
She remembers the days when Bess Lomax and husband Butch Hawes, once members of the Almanac Singers with Woody Guthrie, strummed and sang at hootenannies that Will Geer and his family held in Topanga Canyon. And Weissman was there when Richard and Mimi Farina and every other rising star in folk music appeared at the now legendary Ash Grove on Melrose Avenue.
Like so many folkies, Weissman championed causes, as well as a musical style.
"I protested at the Renaissance Fair--the whole bit," she said. The cause on that occasion was the decision to divert and effectively destroy California's Stanislaus River.
For 20 years, the Weissmans have been the force behind the Summer Solstice Folk Music Dance & Storytelling Festival, which she describes as "the largest participatory folk festival in the United States." They also founded the California Traditional Music Society, or CTMS.
Two years ago, Weissman persuaded the city of Los Angeles' Cultural Affairs Department to give the nonprofit CTMS the use of a then run-down building in Encino Park.
