One thing that is fairly evident about the fifties is that culture in the UK was much narrower than nowadays; in that most of the culture accorded popular value here was American: Movies, music, food, drinks, clothes

I think this touches on a couple of the running sores (or discussions as they are sometimes described here. One is that people blithely talk about traditional music as if it was obvious or agreed what a tradition is. Most of the tales of traditional music described in this forum have no basis in tradition at all. Tradition is something continuous which you are brought up within and pass on. It is not about how old the music is. It certainly has nothing to do with how the rich and powerful divide us up at any given moment in time.

When you research and learn a song which was sung by people in a different context in a different era there is no element of tradition in this, whether the songs come from the place you were born or not. It may be a fascinating and interesting intelectual excercise but it has nothing to do with tradition, yet so many people in here get self-righteous about the authenticity of their keeping "The Tradition" alive..

My fathers family all worked in the Clyde Shipyards. I have no knowledge of any link to the Lords, Ladies, Kings, Queens, ploughmen, Shepherds, Sailors or Dragoons who inhabit the so called Traditional songs of whichever country you would care to assign me to ( Wilson is an English name, 2 of my grandparents were Irish) My daughters were both born in England. Which Tradition would you wish me to pass on to them?

My father taught me, among many other things, Tom Paxton songs which I have passed on to my daughters. I have learned Archie Fisher and Ewan McColl songs to keep alive the memory of socialist, working people; that is my history, even if some of it is set in Spain, Salford or Chile.

For the past 20 years I have been very interested in the history of old songs. I have even learned a few. I found that most of the songs which I think of as Traditional Scottish are nothing of the sort but were the popular mass entertainments of 2 generations before mine; pre tv music halls and theatres.   However I learned them singing at my Grandparents' houses where we would have big family get togethers at New Year; community singing. That was one of our traditions, shared by a lot of Scottish people. I was brought up with a love of music by my parents and their families. I was brought up in a tradition of getting together and singing or playing anything you could. We spent so long doing it that to find a song which no-one had yet sung different generations would have to sing things from their own era as well as the songs we all shared. Many of the songs I think of as American, or Irish, or English are in fact Scottish in origin but my singing them is not continuation of any Scottish tradition.   I recently relearned an old American folk song " Mr Froggy went a courting", passed on to me by my Dad from Burl Ives in the sixties but reinforced by Tom and Jerry in the seventies. It is only through Mudcat that I now know this song to be a very old Scottish song. The oldest song which I sing ( I think) is Lord Randall an ancient precursor of many songs down the centuries but I picked it up from Pete Morton, a young man from Leicester and one of the few people I have heard over the years who really can make the old multiverse ballads come to life.   

For centuries music has been used to undermine boundaries of politics and class. However there have always been people like WAV who try to use it in the opposite direction -Keep the poor people of the world in their place/country, pretend that this is the natural order of things. Music lasts as it moves round the world and down generations because it speaks universal truths. Borders and populations come and go to reflect the power politics of a moment.