All a bit daft if you ask me.

the guy asks about English music and you tell him about english Song.

the fact is if there was an English music - it was aprobably Celtic in origin. By the time anybody started looking it was certainly fragmentary. the Lincolnshire bagpipes that were still around up the 19th century point to that. And some people claim they can hear modal inflections in the recordings of songs by Joseph Taylor - also of Linconshire.

The Watersons and Carthy are an imaginative attempt by nice eductaed middle class folk revivalists at recreating an English style - but they are about as valid as grammar school boys like Paul Weller singing punk music wiv cockney accents, and much less influential.

You pays your money and takes your choice.

The overwhelming influence on English music for over a hundred and thirty years have been American performers with their attractive and eclectic style.

In England the consciously educated middle classes try to come up with a formula that predates the American invasion. Some of us feel uncomfortable with a style of music that rejects and alienates the music sensibilities of our parents and grandparents and great grandparents.