One last round.
Does it matter what we call our music if all we want to do is play it? maybe not to the individual peformer, but it certainly does if we want others to listen to it.
In the days when the folk revival was in a far better state than it is now one of the untiting factors was our consistency. It spread over a wide range of material, but it was recognisable. We could choose our folk clubs on the basis of how the music was played rather than on what type of music organisers had decided to give us. It fell within identifiable parameters.
Our access to the media was by no means enough but it was far greater then.
MacColl was giving us 'The Song Carriers, 10 superb programmes on what he could consistently refer to 'folk music' and know he would be understood, followed by another four on the 'folk' revival. Bert Lloyd gave us 13 excellent programmes called 'Songs of the People', a world-wide look at folk music using the best examples. He gave us two on the songs of the Durham miners, and something like a dozen on various aspects of folk song, as did other broadcasters, David Attenborough, John Levy, Deben Bhattacharya.... loads more. Charles Parker and Phillip Donellan were producing documentart radio programmes and films: Passage West (immigration), Gone For A Soldier, The Irishmen, The Iron Box (George Jackson), and other on Travellers, canal people, Appalachia.... you name it - folk songs and music were an integral part of it. We still have several hundred of these on our shelves.
The other side of the coin was The Spinners, The Dubliners, The Clancys, Hall and MacGregor; all playing music that had a firm basis in '54'. We even had our own programmes, which again varied widely but never really strayed too far from what we could recognise as having a consistent identity.
By and large we lost our access to the media, but even among the few crumbs we are now being fed, the last substantial programme I saw, 'Folk Britannia' was based on something I could recognise as folk.
And what would SS give us as a substitute image - "Blues, Shanties, Kipling, Cicely Fox Smith, Musical Hall, George Formby, Pop, County, Dylan, Cohen, Cash, Medieval Latin, Beatles, Irish Jigs and Reels, Scottish Strathspeys, Gospel, Rock, Classical Guitar, Native American Chants, Operatic Arias and even the occasional Traditional Song and Ballad" oh, and sung "irrespective of ability". I can just hear the media hammering on the door wanting a piece of that. Haven't heard Mike Harding's programme for a long time, but is this what he's giving out now?
So SS would rob us of any coherent public identity with his 'desigated folk context' definition.
Then he would rob us of our connection with all the other 'folk' disciplines (can't help but notice that he consistently refuses to address this one). I don't altogether agree with a definition only being a of interest to academics, but I haven't got time to go into it now.
Then he would take away from us our freedom to choose our own music, by subsituting it with his Magical Mystery Tour.
He would even deprive us of our chance of co-operating and communicating with each other by totally fragmenting our music and consigning our definition to individual clubs.
For all his crocodile tears over fair play to our source singers, he would separate them from their folk identity and from their ability to create, by trying (and failing miserably) to credit our folk songs to the work of 'talented individuals'.
All of which indicates, to me at least, that SS, 'traddie' though he claims to be - (not forgetting his shotgun-riding friend), neither understands the tradition nor gives a toss for its welfare.
Must go - Galway calls.
Jim Carroll