> The point is that when you are going to obscure corners of the world to interview gypsies, fishermen, shepherds (never check out girls or people working in call centres, or blokes fitting double glazing) - you are ignoring the vast generality of humanity and the songs they sing and the stories they have to tell. <

The double glazing fitters and check-out girls probably do have their own workplace folklore, family stories and oral history, WLD, but do they (any more than accountants and IT specialists) have songs - meaning verses and choruses, that they can sing without a cue card? That's why Jim Carroll has spent so much time with the travellers - their communities carried on singing songs after many others had stopped.

For what it's worth, I thought Pip Radish's first post summed it up really well.