Let me say, right from the start, that I suspect that I am opening a REALLY, REALLY BIG can of worms here - and perhaps playing Devil's Advocate a bit. But is (Anglo/American) folk song really as political as we have been told it is for the last half century or so? Is it really (almost exclusively) about the lives of traditional/source singers and their communities? And is it really almost exclusively rooted in and almost exclusively about the occupations of those singers and communities?

In an on-going thread ("how important is the label traditional singer") we have reached a stage where various contributors are arguing about whether or not various 'recently' written songs have entered the repertoires of various mining and fishing communities (Why do we obsess so much about miners and fishermen? Just asking. I have nothing against either type of worker, by the way!) and whether or not such songs can be classified as 'traditional'. This argument has revealed an hypothesis which states that if a particular type of worker, living in a particular type of community, regards a particular song as being 'relevant' to his/her life (and occupation), and sings it, then that makes the song 'traditional'; is this true?

I've just been re-reading David Buchan's thought-provoking book, 'The Ballad and the Folk' (Pb. Ed., Tuckwell Press, 1997) and came across the following passage about ballads (p. 76):

"The ballads are distanced; they have settings which distance them from the everyday work of the plough and the byre [wish I could underline that sentence!]. Their ambience is aristocratic and their characters noble; the queens and ladies, kings, knights and squires enact their roles in castles, halls and bowers shadowily peopled by the maries and porters and page-boys of the noble household."

So, this passage suggests that a big chunk of the repertoire wasn't particularly relevant to the lives and occupations of the people who sang it. Although there is no doubt that the ballads were/are full of images and archetypes which were/are relevant to the lives of everybody, irrespective of social class or standing. Interesting to note that the greatest ballad singers of the Twentieth century tended to be Travellers - people who, for much of that century, were at the opposite end of the social scale from the Lords and Ladies they sang about.

My own view is that folk song is as much about escapism as it is about class politics. Surely, people who are in arduous and soul-destroying occupations need to escape from such occupations now and again - not to be constantly reminded of them!

My own motivation for singing folk songs is strongly escapist. No doubt some people will despise me for that, but remember, "the only people who have anything to fear from escapism are jailers" (now who said that?).