I think Banjiman summed up some of the major arguments quite well at 05.32 today. Many of us are happily involved in trad/folk music because we were lucky enough to be teenagers at a time when trad/folk was 'pop'. People today just aren't exposed to a wide variety of musics - and there are certainly forces at work to discourage them getting involved in music that doesn't offer Big Business a lot of opportunities to make money.

(Governments prefer what they call 'long value-added chains' which means that a lot of people can make a lot of money in the process of churning out music. Trad/folk is significant because it has less of these opportunities.)

ACE's 4 'criteria' (lol) are pretty much the same as ACW's when core funding was pulled from 17 clients across Wales - which included Pontardawe Folk Festival and Welsh Folk Dance Society (and many other non-folk clients). The argument was that they were under the £20K threshold and they would still have Lottery project money to apply for ... an argument put forward at the same time as loss of Lottery revenue was being announced.

Governments say they champion diversity, and yet the musical choices available to people today are becoming narrower and narrower, and valued only as a taxable commodity. The playing field is anything but level and I see no problem in receiving public funding to keep trad/folk's profile before the public, when other art forms have both commercial and public funding doing the same for them.

Folk agencies are important (OK - I'm biased) because they can/should be taking trad/folk music beyond the 'usual suspects' and engaging with new audiences. They are also important for campaigning and advocating on behalf of the genre.

War it might be but who will be drawing up the battle plans and who will man the posts? If it isn't all worked out strategically, nothing will happen - and thundering hordes of rabble will achieve nothing. The arguments will have to be about 'community music' (rather than 'folk') and social cohesion, and cultural tourism, and heritage ... and all those other buzz words. And Mohammed will have to go to the Mountain. (trac, for instance, is doing all the Welsh party political conferences campaigning primarily against the Licencing fiasco.)

I've already emailed some of the concerned individuals and offered support but I'm going to wait til they tell me what I can do effectively within their overall strategy.

sian


sian