"decent prices and incomes policy for England -"
Not the job of folksong or any art form to organise society - only to reflect it artistically - which it does pretty well
"in modal chord progression."
The tradition in England is basically an unaccompanied one - try Spain
" that's why the nazis valued folksong.
The Nazis to existing Germanic Legends and used them as propaganda - Wagner is full of them
Nothing wrong with the legends - they reflected the values of the past.
The same goes for songs about wife-beating - they are reflections of what we were.
There are in fact, very few 'jingoistic' folk songs - they tend to deal with the situation of the ordinary man, most of them are the opposite of 'jingoism'
If I wanted to know what was happening in the Napoleonic wars, what battles were fought, where, when.... etc, I would go to the history books
If I wanted to know how it felt to be a 19th century farm worker forcibly taken from his wife and family and stuck in front of someone of a similar age and background and told to blow them to pieces - I would go to the folk songs
Similarly, if I wanted to know how a young woman following her lover across the battlefields of the world and risking the same dangers he was in order to be with him - I would go to the folk songs
This is virtually non-existent anywhere else - the folk songs are the carriers of that sort of information - that is one of their values - Buddy Holly never managed to do that for us.
You are entitled to try and make money from this music if that's what turns you on, but you do or not has nothing to do with its value or significance
"the musical creativity of the ordinary people."
It was once - it is now the casual pastime of a minuscule and disappearing number of enthusiasts
The overwhelming majority of ordinary people are far more concerned with the residents of Coronation Street or Albert Square - or the life and times of Del Boy and Rodney - that is why your claim to being 'folk' is a false one.
When I came into the music, the clubs were largely made up of working class young people like myself - no longer the case sadly
"NO MORE THAN I UNDERSTAND MY FATHER'S LIFE!"
Don't know about your father's life - I know a little of mine and am trying to learn more
He went to Spain and ended up a prisoner of war - he came back with songs about his experiences
He was blacklisted and ended up on the roads as a navvy - there are songs about that and he had masses of stories about his experiences.
His father, my grandfather, was a merchant seaman in the last days of sail - there are loads of songs of that life and he even managed to remember a handful of shanties he'd picked up (not many)
My father's sister and her husband and child were driven out of Derry, in the newly formed six-county state during the sectarian riots - well covered in songs
Their predecessors were Famine refugees who were driven from ireland by The Great Hunger - probably the second largest body of songs in the Irish repertoire are about emigration and landlordism......
Examples such as these are what make up our folk song repertoire going back many centuries - they are what has gone into what we are.
You people place more value on something mumbled into the armpit of a feller strumming a guitar, about his being given the elbow by an unnamed and unspecified bird who is, apparently, his sole reason for being alive - that's how your 'navel fluff' comes across to me.
I'll stick with the poachers - far more interesting and entertaining and far more to do with long-term reality - I was unwise enough to go drinking far to many Australians in my London days - killer nights out Blue!!
Jim Carroll