oh yeah and i don't sing kumbayya. however it is a prayer. it would be quite appropriate sung after a major humanitarian disaster--like a posting by richard bridges--oh that was a cheap shot but it felt so good.

i sing almost all acadien/quebecois trad tunes or nova scotia newfoundland songs and dance tunes. i do get tired of the pop slippage but i don't think you can tell others what to sing.

i do love to hear great traditional singers from any tradition.

i don't much like fields of athen rye but i have heard it sung sean nos and it was great.

i get a little tired of hackneyed lowland scotts songs like a parcel of rogues in a nation--i mean really the act of union made the lowlanders rich. how horrible. its the highlanders who got ehtniclly cleansed from their homes to cape breton and the like.

i do wish to report however that once you get over here--things aren't half friggin bad. there were never more than six hundred thousand gaels(we don;t call ourselves highlanders by the way) in scotland and there are seventeen million in north america, in addition to the fifty five million descendants of irish gaels in north america..

i have heard a great version of stings "we work the black seem together" at a folk circle and it was great. it is a very common theme in a lot of coal mining areas.. so it needn't all be traditional tunes.

in eastern canada there are many new songs "in the tradition" i love to hear them. from stan rogers(from guysborough countryl ike half my family) to dermot o'reilly and fergus o'byrne. i like great big ses modern take on traditional songs but they do cut too many verses. i don't like their modern tunes at a folk circle.

and i love to hear any one singing gaelic