Rise Up Singing? Yeah, looked at it once. It's ever so self-worthy, christian and white. WASPish, in fact.

What I'm concerned with is the vast range of peoples and their cultures who live out there in the real America: Cajun and Creole in Louisiana, hip-hop, rap, house, grunge and gospel in New York, the blues of New Orleans and Chicago, theTejano blend of Mexican and European in Texas, the music of immigrant communities such as Italians, Ukrainians, Poles and Swedes in the major cities, Armenians in California, Conjunto and the local and regional musics of indigenous communities. This is all highly political and real yet scarcely ever gets a mention on Mudcat.

But the forum is awash with ethnically-cleansed, ironed-out, dumbed-down mainstream from US-corporate-sponsored mainstream festivals, summer camps and coffee shops produced by identikit backwards-facing baseball hats chewing on McRubbish. I skim over it because I'm NOT INTERESTED. It's cultural colonialism and thus anti-political.


Oh, and Steve, I don't give a toss whether you call me a communist or not. I spent seven years writing for a communist newspaper, so it's fairly moot. I'll leave others to refute your mangled potted 'history' of the English revival. Sounds a lot like 'Pete & Woody are bigger and better than Ewan & Bert' to me.