Sorry to start on a partly negative note, but the thread has got a bit towards treating Seth Lakeman as a watershed, and liking for him as a litmus test, and I don't think that that is wholly appropriate. Personally, I don't much like Seth Lakeman's take on the folk music he plays - I don't mind the bass heavy arrangements in fact I quite like them, what I don't like is that I simply don't recognise the tunes of folk songs he does (for example "The Setting of the Sun") and I don't see them put forward as new tunes to old songs. I would accept that if it were stated (like John Loomes version of "All for me Grog") - and then it would be a matter simply of whether that would become an accepted new (or alternative) tune for the song (as happened, I think to "Willie of Windsbury" by accident, or maybe it was the tune for that used for something else or like John Barden's tune for "The trees they do grow high"), but I will support his absolute right to do r-arrange (and re-melody, and re-word) folk songs and he does what he does very well. I'd prefer more "rock" timing than "disco", but that is a matter of personal preference. He seems a nice chap and once even nodded to me in a corridor in passing. Good luck to him, so long as he does not pretend that stuff that is not folk is folk.


I don't however see "constructive criticism" in Mr Monster. I don't read all his posts but what I perceive is him saying that the problem with folk clubs is folk music and they should get rid of it and put in modern "folkalike" music. A severe case of baby and bathwater.

Al, of course, is a big wind-up merchant, determined to exclude the middle classes and richer from true proletarian folk (as he defines it) and I am amused by the parallel with Lloyd's concept of "industrial folk" but the fact of the matter in the places I go to is that there are a range of people all happily folking away, from senior career diplomats, HNW persons, others making their fortunes in IT, lawyers, accountants etc, through teachers, social workers, various types of clerical and manual workers, transport workers, stress victims in early retirement, persons with mental health and psychological issues, quite a lot on minimum wage, and a range of claimants and "black economy" workers. Some even drink lager, and are only mildly ribbed for it. A middle class ghetto? I don't think so.

Incidentally, a lot of classical and rock musicians too struggle to live off their music, which is why the MU strives to restrict the entry of non-union labour wherever possible - so that those once in can earn more.

I'm more worried, I think, about the lack of strong singers amongst the young, particularly the women, although there have been some great ones at the late lamented Miskin festival, perhaps drawing on the Welsh habit of song, than I am about the difficulty musicians find in earning. There is a long tail in sports, too: a few high earners and many less well off and then the amateurs and semi-pros.