Huffington Post:
The thing to remember about folk music -- both in the common American sense, as meaning the music of the South and of Appalachia that goes back to the ballads of the British Isles, and in the larger sense, as any traditional music of a specific local tradition, such as the Delta Blues -- is that it is complex music by and for people who are not simple. Folk music is an oral tradition, which is why it is often thought of as the low music of hillbillies and sharecroppers. Literate culture looks down on what is not transcribable, and in doing so limns the limitations of snobbery. But griot cultures know and understand marvelous things. Morgan Sexton or Skip James expressed at least as much of the sense of life as Beethoven did.
[By the way, Seeger graduated from Avon Old Farms School in Avon, Connecticut. There are a lot of privileged Communists who have attended the New England boarding schools, I find. I never understood why he could never have a hammer. They're cheap and ubiquitous.]
Related article from Bloomberg Media: Pete Seeger: Folkie, Communist, Millionaire