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Art was the speech of the folk revival--and yet, at bottom, the folk revival did not believe in art at all.  Rather, life--a certain kind of life--equaled art, which ultimately meant that life replaced it.  The kind of life that equaled art was defined by suffering, deprivation, poverty, and social exclusion . . . the poor are art because they sing their lives without the false consciousness of captialism and the false desires of advertising.
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When art is confused with life, it is not merely art that is lost.  When art equals life there is no art, but when life equals art there are no people.

--Greil Marcus, The Old, Weird America