I'm what most people would think is left in terms of politics. Paul Goodman (I think - it just might have been Noam Chomsky - anyway, one of the good guys) used to describe himself as "a Neolithic Conservative", and that's a phrase I like. I don't much like a lot of these modern inventions like governments and money and armies...

And since I like the kind of music you can make without making a huge fuss about it, and handing it over to overpayed entrepreneurs and professionals, that's one way I express my politics. When I sing I've got the same politics as when I write or when I talk.

But I think we mistake ourselves badly if we assume that folk music and left wing politics (or whatever you call it)necessarily go together. Out in Serbia patriotic music is big - and though Milosevic uses the word Socialist, so did Hitler, and it means something different with those kind of people.

When they were organising the bicentenary for the French Revolution they ran into a bit of trouble, because they wanted lots of traditional musicians playing, and they found that a lot of the best from Brttany weren't at all keen, because they didn't much reckon the Fench Revolution.

Actually I reckon they were quite right, because the French Revolution was about as sympathetic to Brittany as the English Revolution and Cromwell were to Ireland. But the point is that, even when it comes to up to date things, like attitudes towards immigration and so forth, traditional musicians are often pretty right-wing.