Rosebud

Plays the Music of Newport Rosebud

Rosebud Plays the Music of the Newport Folk Festival is an ingenious reworking of songs from the American folk and blues traditions, a harmonic, melodic, improvised remoulding of those traditions into a more modern mythos. Conceived in 1959 by Newport Jazz Festival founder George Wein, and American folk music icon Pete Seeger, the Newport Folk Festival celebrated the depth and diversity of the American folk tradition. The festival enjoyed only a handful of glory years; during those years Peter Paul and Mary, Joan Baez , Judy Collins, and Bob Dylan became stars, and the careers of such country blues legends as Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, and Howlin’ Wolf were resurrected. But by the mid 1960’s the festival and the folk music movement had reached its apogee. The Beatles-led British invasion brought a new relevancy to rock and roll, and Bob Dylan’s brashly irreverent performance of “Maggie’s Farm” at the 1965 Newport Festival signalled which way the wind was blowing. Dylan’s electric apostasy symbolized the beginning of the end of the folk movement as America’s mainstream muse. But the music had re-planted its seeds in the rich loam of America’s youth, and would directly and indirectly influence the culture, politics, and music of the generation growing up in the 1960’s and 70’s.