"Songs of America" at the 92nd Street Y A two-hour-plus program consisting largely of rough-hewn Americana is not an easy sell to the urbane, Broadway-savvy audience for the 92nd Street Y's Lyrics and Lyricists series. But in its newest program, "Songs of America: From Stephen Foster to Bob Dylan and Beyond," Ted Sperling, its guest artistic director, offered a coherent, entertaining survey course in folk, blues and gospel, with a tart spritz of socially conscious Broadway. The audience at Sunday evening's show (the third of five performances) reacted enthusiastically. Songs of America: From Stephen Foster to Bob Dylan and Beyond The show, at the 92nd Street Y, featured Jamie Leonhart and others. After the opening number, Maxwell Anderson and Kurt Weill's proto-Tea Party song, "How Can You Tell an American?," from the 1938 musical satire "Knickerbocker Holiday" (the salient American trait, declares this anti-Roosevelt song, is a fanatical resistance to authority), the show settled into a chronology. Parlor songs, traditional ballads and working songs led to the Broadway section and then to the "60s folk revival, all culminating with Paul Simon's pessimistic "American Tune," to which Mr. Sperling appended his worried personal reflections on the state of the country. In a show like this, casting is the thing, as well as a reasonable authenticity of musical presentation. Much of that was provided by David M. Lutken, a tall, lean folk musician and multi-instrumentalist with a chameleon voice, whom Mr. Sperling called his "secret weapon." Mr. Lutken, a Dallas native and principal banjoist for the Baton Rouge Symphony, created a successful touring show, "Woody Sez," about the life of Woody Guthrie. In the evening's singalong section, he offered a sampling of little-known, "subversive" lyrics Guthrie wrote for "This Land Is Your Land." Singing "Sixteen Tons," his voice followed Tennessee Ernie Ford into the mineshaft. If the program demanded that its musicians cover more territory than they could comfortably occupy, each singer had at least one standout moment. Lawrence Clayton's lusty "Nine Pound Hammer," Clarke Thorell's sly "Little Tin Box" (from "Fiorello!"), Jamie Leonhart's "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?" (Mr. Sperling's choice of a feminist anthem) and Kecia Lewis-Evans's version of Randy Newman's "Louisiana" made the songs come alive. And the ensemble - Jeffrey Klitz (piano), Antoine Silverman (violin), Kevin Kuhn (guitar), Peter Donovan (bass) and Warren Odze (drums) - adroitly shape-shifted from genre to genre. But besides Mr. Sperling, who annotated the songs with pertinent remarks, the evening belonged to Mr. Lutken. This relaxed, strolling minstrel evoked a stream of folksy vaudevillians, from Will Rogers through Guthrie and beyond. He has the gift of musical gab.