Look around you, and you’ll find the world is changing faster than you can blink. Everything from politics to technology to the weather, even, is evolving and metastasizing in a way we’ve never seen before.

Those of us in the millennial generation grew up being thrashed by the winds of change. We came into our political consciousness in the wake of the deadliest foreign attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, which spurred rapid, then long-lived military incursions abroad. Just seven short years later, the global economy took a nosedive, positioning millennials to enter the workforce in the worst economy since the Great Depression. The concurrent rise of the 24-hour news media, broad social connectivity through platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, and the Citizens United v. FEC  decision of 2010 have shaken the foundations of the political and governing processes of our entire country, from the smallest city council all the way to the White House. Public acceptance of our LGBT brothers and sisters has leaped forward at a truly mind-boggling clip – just 12 years after the last sodomy law was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2003, same-sex marriage was made legal in all 50 states. At the same time, state governments have taken action to prevent trans folk from using public restrooms in concordance with their gender identities, and hate crimes against immigrants, Muslim and Jewish people, and people of color have ticked up in frequency. Higher education has become both more expensive and more necessary than at any previous point in human history, leading to a debt crisis in my generation that has pushed back our ability to leave home, make major purchases, and start our own families.

So is it any wonder that the 20-somethings of today may be looking for something, anything, that feels familiar and constant? Or that that something may just be a banjo?

If you find this unlikely, I would point to both the infamous millennial love of rustic aesthetics (anyone seen a mason jar mug around lately?) and the cyclical nature of folk music in America.