I've always believed folk revival is built on heady mixture of Merrie Olde England (add country of choice) and self delusion but that much of the music is quite splendid. It just doesn't bear scrutiny as authentic in the linear way it claims.
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If you buy into the viral theory of infection eliminating indigenous musical memes (to mix a metaphor), it didn't start with Elvis's pelvis or even peculiar musical hall acts

You really are good at missing the point, glueman.

1) The self-deluding Merrie England side of the folk revival - people like this

or, God help us, this

irritates me hugely. So we've got no disagreement there.

2) Authenticity - I've actually written about how some folk songs come off old broadsides, some are 18th-century show tunes and some come out of the Victorian music hall. A huge range of material from a huge range of sources, with a massive amount of bashing-about and patching-together along the way. So again, you're arguing with somebody, but it's not me.

3) Indigenous musical memes - I like indigenous musical memes; I particularly like the way they travel all over the world, meet up with other indigenous musical memes and have lots of little memelets. Yet again, you're arguing with someone other than me (possibly WAV).

4) It didn't start with Elvis - no, the erosion of the living tradition by mass-produced music-to-listen-to had started long before that (I'd say it started with the pianola).

5) It didn't start with the music hall - as far as I'm concerned plenty of music hall songs entered the tradition, so clearly I don't think that was where the rot set in


My position's really very simple. If you'll forgive me a few more bullet-points:

- There's a difference between a society where more or less everyone makes music, and a society where more or less everyone listens to recorded music and hardly anyone makes it.

- Our ancestors, going back (say) 150 years, lived in society type 1 or something close to it. We live in society type 2 or something close to it.

- Folk music is a good name for the kind of music that gets made in society type 1.