We have quite deliberately focused throughout OFAM 2008 not on the sad, poignant songs of the Great Depression and World War II, not on the folk songs, protest songs or songs that recorded the social and political ills of the time, because we wanted to look at the period with different eyes and ears. We all know the truly wonderful, light-hearted, uplifting songs of the Great American Songbook and know--when we stop to think about it--that these songs were by and large written during some of the hardest times of our country's history. But very seldom do we put those great songs and those times together. Rather we are asked to think of The Great Depression pointedly in terms of a no less great but quite different set of songs arising both from within the popular music industry and from creative sources beyond it. This is okay to up to a point. What we have tried to demonstrate this summer's festival is that America's Greatest Generation, their times and their spirit, cannot and should not be remembered strictly as a series of WPA photos of weather-beaten sharecroppers and desperate ex-businessmen selling apples viewed to the strains of Woody Guthrie or Harburg and Gorney's "Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?".