Folk songs of today?

It took me four corrections to get that sentence correct, what does that say?

Who's today? The Bush/Blair voter, the unemployed, the yoof, the burger flipper, the person with HIV, ....................... lots of todays, lots of things to say.

The 50s Folk revival happened for all sorts of reasons but one was the empty pop/rock of the early fifties. Rock today has a lot more to say, Arctic Monkeys, Rap even if you don't like some of the things it says.

Lots of old songs come from a time when lots of people did the same kinds of things on the land perhaps that's why the songs survived. Some old somgs come from the Industrial Revolution and have a lot to say about the lives of those people.

What am I to sing today? I guess songs I feel comfortable with. I feel silly singing some old songs in the same way I would if I sang blues. In turn I feel ill at ease when Mancunians sing American Country or blues but it's up to each of us to decide.

Great songs like great literature have more than the some of their parts:

So, come all you maids that go a courting
Listen now to what I say
Their is many a dark and stormy morning
Turns out to be a bright, sunshiny day

or

Too soon to be out of my bed
Too soon to be on this bus queue caper
Searching for change for my picture paper
On Monday Morning

And just to show that I haven't lost the thread (?) completely, who wrote this, where was he, when was it and why does this song matter?

See how hunger has eaten the faces
Tired flesh to the bones just clings
There's dust in the lungs and the bodies are twisted
This is the valley where Cotton is King