One of the more intriguing misgivings of the revival is a particular cultish off-shoot that thinks of itself as The Tradition, be it in respect of Old Songs or New. I've heard Scowie & Giff's When All Men Sing described as having passed into The Tradition, as with many others. This doesn't have much bearing on the precepts of the 1954 Definition, for things may pass into this Tradition unchanged by dint of their perceived folk character alone, and qualification is entirely a matter of communal concensus. Bob Copper and Peter Bellamy's The Old Songs is a similar sort of song - like When All Men Sing, it's a New Folk Song about Old Folk Songs and the singing thereof in the sort of singarounds which are, perhaps ironically, very much a phenomenon of the modern revival.

Like Speen said some way above, or below, I'm always keen to keep the two things quite seperate. The Tradition is a sacrosanct musical and cultural phenomenon which we know only through the efforts of early collectors who sought to document it as best they could, to preserve it, or at least the manifestations of it, whilst they had a chance to do so. The Revival - or more properly revivals - is an entirely different thing; for a start it operates at several very significant cultural removes from The Tradition, that is as far as The Tradition can be said to have existed at all, rather than the Idyll that has come down to us determined by the sort of song that was likely to have been sung by a certain sort of person at such-and-such a point in history - be they farmers boy, huntsman or collier lad. Music has always been an important part of working-class culture, but just because a music is of the working class doesn't necessarily make it Folk Music, and the 1954 Definition is an attempt to clarify this. My personal objection is mostly one of philosphy and interpretation; I believe the entire concept of Folk is essentially a Myth - be it Folktale, Folklore, Folk Art, Folk Dance or whatever. In all cases Folk is an agenda-ridden construct hatched in scholarly isolation from the thing itself, much less the creators and participants, who were cherished for their very special purity, without which they were no longer considered to be Folk - like much of the Lancastrian processional Morris tradition which Sharp rejected as being somehow tainted. That such Traditions are alive and well today as Fluffy Morris is of genuine Folkloric significance, yet few folkies, it any, are interested.

In this day and age, our concepts are perhaps a little less weighted; a term like Community is broader and more flexible in terms of the pragmatics of usage, so any reading of the 1954 Definition becomes, in effect, a nonesense. We recognise that all culture is in constant flux, and that notions such as purity are, at best, entirely bogus. However, the pure blood myths still endure, the notion of untainted cultural authenticity is still carried in many a Folkie's heart; the belief that, somehow or other in the mass-morass of 20th & 21st Century European Culture there exists a genuine 100% Authentic Folk Tradition Entirely Uninfluenced by the Outside World or The Folk Revival is one I have met with on any number of occasions. Naturally, I refute both this and the specious grounds on which it is invariably predicated; indeed, I reject the notion of cultural purity as an essentially right-wing nationalistic fantasy, and reserve my waryness when I hear Folkies opine that Folk is 'Their Culture' on a level with the ethnic cultures of (say) the Islamic communities with whom we share our true nationhood.

It is a similar weariness I have when I hear people insisting that New Folk Songs are The Traditional Songs of the future. For sure, there are New Folk Songs, and many damn fine ones too. You may catch one of ours on the Radio Three iPlayer for the next day or so; it's also on the current fRoots download compilation album. This is an Idiomatic Folk Song distantly inspired by a notion of Appalachian field-hollers (rather than a slavish immitation of actual examples) using (somewhat accidentally) the Javanese pelog mode, and a pentantonic fiddle style derived (mostly) from my life-long love of Michael Hurly, but the song is our creation. It is modern, but anciently idiomatic; whether or not it ever becomes part of the Folk Canon depends on people other than ourselves being moved to sing it, but even if they do it won't be part of The Tradition. For sure, it echoes The Tradition (as a concept) it acknowledges The Tradition (as a construct) it even celebrates The Folk Process (the words are built on a riddling sequence of images as though they were a mondegreened fragment of something else), but like other Modern Folk Songs, it's too self-consciously A Folk Song to ever become Traditional. This is both the essence and dilema of Folk (which is why I often use the term Steamfolk) but one which is, I feel, essentially very positive and highly productive and very Joyful indeed. Just look at all the amazing Revival Folk Music that has been made over the last sixty years...

When we deal in Traditional Folk Songs and Modern Folk Songs we're dealing with subjective dialogues on the nature of Folk itself, which is essentially a post-modern cultural reaction, often for the very best of reasons, and occasionally for the very worst (hence Folk Against Fascism which I would hope is very dear to us all). We do this thing out of individual choice, it asserts an individual identity - not a cultural one. Indeed, Individualism is our Culture in the the UK; it is Diverse, Complex, Multi Ethnic, Fraught With Difficulties and yet, ultimately, it is Wonderful. If Folk is about anything at all it's about certain individuals being moved to make those sort of choices, but once it becomes anything more in terms of proscriptive cultural correctness, then I really don't want any part of it. That is not my Folk, nor yet is it my cherished multi-cultural UK. Real Folklore is still measured by a complete innocence of folklore; even Bob Trubshaw acknlowdeges that much by quoting Warshaver in his very fine and highly recommended Explore Folklore (Heart of Albion, 2002 - read more HERE), thus real folklore just happens, entirely innocernt of the fact that it's folklore at all. So, despite all the mass-media talent circuses in the world, culture will always be what culture will be, and what the cultural landscapes of the future will yield are not for us to say. Will Folk exist? Does Folk exist now? Who can say? The best we can do, therefore, is just to keep on doing what we love to do and encouraging others to do what they love to do without creating false oppositions by looking for trouble which, in the present instance, just isn't there.