Yes, but excellent though WLD's Wyatt Earp song may be, whose history is Wyatt Earp?


For once I am not simply saying that there s folk adn there is other music (although I belive that to be so, and it is interesting to see Don Firth's confirmation that ethnomusicologists maintain a distinction).

The point here is the thread. "Why should we sing FOLK music at all". The answer to that is different if you take the 1954 defintion, the horse defnition, or the WLD definition (which is, I think, "whatever type of music most people sing, excluding opera") or the Gene Burton definition which is top secret.

I gave my answer to the question asked in my first post to this thread, but if I was answering questions about horse music, WLD music, or Gene music (or Dylanist music or snigger snogwriter music) the answer would differ.

Horse music I might sing because it sounds fun. I have done the Reuben James for exactly that reason.

WLD music might be because the song tells a tale of the modern human condition. As close as I get would be "Love has no pride" (not one of his, but the sound is similar, and a damn good song it is, albeit not folk). I've also done "Yellow Submarine" 'cos people join in with gusto (not Bisto), and "Play with Fire" which always seems to get people going.

Gene music I don't know, because we have no litmus test.

Dylanism tells of the folly of the world. I have heard a practising Dylanist defined as a person who believes that it is possible to cause social and political change through song. For precisely those reasons, but without much hope any more, I do "We shall overcome" "With God on our side" "So Long" "Eve of Destruction", "the Cat came back" "Anthem of the Rainbow" and "Come away Melinda".

Snigger snogwriter - I do Richard Matthewman's "Bernadette" (very different from the Four Tops, I can assure you) - because it is a nice melancholy love song.

Some I sing because my late wife used to.

So, if "folk" means one of those things, that's why we should sing folk music.