Folk vs Folk

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Jassplayer
Date: 14 May 08 - 08:54 AM

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 14 May 08 - 08:58 AM

These old cigar-box fiddles turn up in junk shops all the time

North-East junk shops that is; I wonder, has anyone else seen them in other parts of the country?

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Jassplayer
Date: 14 May 08 - 08:59 AM

I'd like to be a rural peasant, but I can't afford the property taxes or the commute.
Do the inane things I hum to myself while trying to ignore ill-mannered drivers count as "work songs?"

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 14 May 08 - 09:06 AM

(H)um..?.."Spencer the Rover" (E. trad.), Jassplayer?!

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Folknacious
Date: 14 May 08 - 09:48 AM

Ob? Surely that should be N#

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: M.Ted
Date: 14 May 08 - 10:12 AM

The "ineluctable" business is a   frequently noted quote from the beginning of the third chapter of Joyce's "Ulysses"--the full phrase is "The ineluctable modality of the visible", and it is relevant here because the protagonist is reflecting on what is real and what is only appearance--which is the issue that is of concern to the first poster in this thread.

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 14 May 08 - 12:04 PM

"If you can name the author/composer of the song, it ain't folk."

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong etc., etc.

I know Jim Carroll got there first - but I had to say it as well! The statement above (the one in quotes) is just plain wrong!!!

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: maire-aine
Date: 14 May 08 - 12:12 PM

How much folk can a folk musician folk, if a folk musician could folk folk?

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 28 May 08 - 09:20 AM

I'd just like to confess that for the purposes of this thread I was GUEST, The Observer; fully intending a light-hearted parody of the other GUEST, The Observer threads but unwittingly realising something with substance! If I'd been more observant I'd have noticed that in genuine GUEST, The Observer threads it's v rather than vs, but otherwise a good thread all in all.

So then, to what extent, if any, is Folk Music the music of an actual Folk other than folkie Folk, whose actuality is compromised by their adoption of objectivist methodology entirely at odds with the subjectivist criteria of actual Folk, thusly perceived? Well, as is becoming clear from this & other threads, not to any great extent at all really!

Does this matter? Not to me it doesn't, although I'm still losing sleep over as to how long I can go on calling it Folk Music!

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Santa
Date: 28 May 08 - 12:24 PM

Sedayne: I think you are at risk of reading too much into your contact who didn't recognise certain songs. Johnny Handle was a miner, as was Jack Elliot, and they clearly did know those songs. There would be many miners with no interest or knowledge of "folk" songs. Those whose life was centred on the church, for example. Temperance followers would not know songs which were sung in drinking centres. So some people know the old songs, many don't. I'm sure that was every bit as true when this old hat was the latest fashion.

Cyril Tawney has something similar to say about songs in the navy. Where, when, and how they were sung.

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 28 May 08 - 01:59 PM

If he was an isolated case, Santa, then I'd be more inclined to agree, but the same thing is coming up again & again - and Jimmy was in no way church or temperance orientated! I don't doubt the songs existed, I just question that they (and so-called folk songs in general) permeated the culture to the extent we've been led / misled to believe, very often by those with a particular political agenda, such as Bert Lloyd, who as it has been shown, wasn't above falsifying his findings.

Interesting you mention Cyril Tawney's navy songs; have you seen Ross Campbell's PermaThread: Mechant Navy Songs which gathers together the songs Ron Baxter collected when he was in the merchant Navy. Makes for fascinating reading!

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: GUEST
Date: 28 May 08 - 05:14 PM

This question sounds like Clinton's parsing of what "is, is". (Or whatever reference to Monica's offering)

The two concepts of folk on the back stoop on folk on the concert stage have crossed over
to make the distinction fuzzy.

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 28 May 08 - 06:09 PM

The two concepts of folk on the back stoop on folk on the concert stage have crossed over to make the distinction fuzzy

Even fuzzier actually; the distinction was between folkies and actual folk (i.e. wider humanity) who couldn't give a toss about folk music in any shape or form. Therefore, if folk is such a minority interest, representing the interests of what remains an specialised elite, how can it justifiably be called folk music?

As has been said elsewhere, you can go for a lot of years in the real world without meeting another folkie...

I'm not saying any of this matters, it was just a notion for a spoof thread which has long outlived it's usefulness.

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Santa
Date: 29 May 08 - 07:54 AM

Then I apologise for extending it, but I think you've raised the point of the music "permeating the culture". I rather doubt it ever did. Were the songs more widespread, why did collectors have to go to some much trouble to find them, and why are so few examples known of many? I don't believe singing, or music, has ever "permeated the culture" beyond hymns in church (or their equivalent!), national anthems and marches, plus something to entertain the crowd at events such as weddings.

Obviously it is tempting for singers and musicians to feel that their enthusiasm has (or had!) great widespread support, but it seems much more likely to have been a genre activity. A "good thing" yes, absorbing for those involved, entertaining for those just passing. But a minority interest. The songs would pass on withing the genre, and those in other minority interests just wouldn't notice it. You'd be amazed (or perhaps not) how many aircraft modellers never stick their head in a model railway show!

As a resident Fylde folkie, it has been my good fortune (OK, small bragging rights!) to be aware of Ron's collection, and the work done by Ross and Ron together. What is delightful is to see this work achieve a wider audience, and what the responses have been. Time to take another look, perhaps, so thanks for the reminder.

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 29 May 08 - 08:18 AM

How could I have overlooked Ron in the Best Folk Song Writer thread? Just sorted it anyway!

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: glueman
Date: 29 May 08 - 08:31 AM

There's a dose of self-delusion at the heart of folk music, namely that certain songs rose from the ooze, an aggregate of human consciousness and language which is an index of their value, whereas other pieces are merely the work of professionals handy with a catchy tune and a pithy lyric.

Once that chunk of dubious objectivity is seen for what it is, that Anon is no better than Nina, that money or lack of wherewithal don't inscribe themselves into a tune beyond the listeners own recognition baggage, the important aspects of Folk music Pop or Bob to the surface. If every unattributed tune were suddenly named in a wizardly bit of academic research, like Jesus's bones being found in the desert, the space they occupy would be no less important for nailing their authorship.
If an appreciation of Folk lies in wilful ignorance of the facts - that folk was probably always a specialist not a common taste - better that something else fills the gap.

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Santa
Date: 29 May 08 - 11:46 AM

I don't think I know anyone who believes songs rose unbidden from the ooze. (Booze, maybe.) So your first premise is lost. That they were altered and improved by anonymous contributors en-route to the current day, perhaps some will admit to that, although the "Folk Process" seems to be used in about the same circumstances as the "Folk Police", with only slightly better credibility.

I entirely agree that knowing the authorship would not add anything to the quality of a song, in musical terms. It may however have some effect on the historic value of the words.

Nah, I can appreciate the stuff without knowing how common it was, or wasn't, so your last premise falls flat too.

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 29 May 08 - 11:55 AM

I'm with Santa on that one. This from my own Myspace blog, if I please:

We lovers of traditional song are not so much the keepers of a tradition, rather the volunteer curators of a museum, entrusted with the preservation of a few precious, priceless and irreplaceable artefacts: hand-crafted tools we no longer know the names of (let alone what they were actually used for) ; hideous masks of woven cornstalks (which are invariably assumed to be pagan) ; and hoary cases of singular taxidermy wherein beasts long extinct are depicted in a natural habitat long since vanished.

Not only is such a museum a beacon for the naturally curious, it's a treasure in and of itself, an anachronism in age of instant (and invariable soulless) gratification, and as such under constant threat by those who want to see it revamped; cleaned up with computerised displays and interactive exhibits and brought into line with the rest of commodified cultural presently on offer.

But not only is this museum is our collective Pit-Rivers, it is a museum which, in itself, is just as much an artefact of a long-vanished era as the objects it contains. It is delicate, and crumbling, but those who truly love it wouldn't have it any other way - and quite rightly so.

A tad polemical I admit, but it is something I am rather passionate about. For the rest it have a look at: The Lieg, The Lief, and the Traditional Folk Song.

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: glueman
Date: 29 May 08 - 03:27 PM

Instinctively I'm drawn to period music because it reveals things, often between the lines, about the people who made it. Folk music is worth preserving for those reasons, though it's not uniformly 'good' and I stand behind the judgement of modern sensibilities in being able to tell the difference. I can see why an Alfred Wallis maritime painting, an authentically naive but informed work attracts high price tags and can appreciate folk music that comes from a similar well spring, unsullied by the influence of more diffused minds.

Like say, architecture, it has to be recognised that music is not a pure phenomenon but a palimpsest of tastes. Once those tastes are added to the original intention is occluded, we accept them as an artifact that arrived with us at a moment in time like we might take a strata of subsoil that contains C19th stuff knowing deeper earth may contain medieval, anglo-saxon, roman or prehistoric pieces.

It's important to recognise that what we seek to preserve is also an act of taste, of connouiseurship and like despised Victorian buildings in the sixties, taste is fleeting. So is the answer to preserve everything? Probably, but in the knowledge that doing so will only tell us about taxonomy. I don't believe Tam Lin was under threat because Sandy Denny performed it through a mic with an electric band, if anything it spread the song to another audience who may have been moved to discover more about the song or folklore generally. There are enough collectors about to set in stone, or whatever virtual rock Wikipedia consists of, traditional songs and the songs themselves are robust enough to weather whatever interpretations a contemporary player may lend them. Imo, we're more likely to kill folk with kindness, to put newcomers off by presenting it purely as a historical re-enactment, than we are to let the song's robustness be tempered by new attitudes.

On Santa's last point, you may exhibit peculiarly liberal attitudes to folk music but rest assured many do see it as a hotline to some musical mother lode and believe it was a common currency rather than a fascinating branch line of popular culture. On Sedayne's point it's unfortunate that folk trades on its anachronistic qualities, much as I might appreciate them, because like patriotism it can be a quirk that negates further discussion, and there are a fair few on Mudcat who'd like to keep it between the boys (though not you Sedayne from what I've read) or want to restrict it, and debate of it, to accolytes and an agreeable elite. In the end folk's unique selling point will preserve it despite the woolly jumpers, dreary monologues and hands-off proprietorial nonsense.

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 30 May 08 - 06:53 AM

Folk is a place I go to sometimes for any number of reasons, but ultimately I go there to forget about me and the world which I inhabit, though there is nothing wrong with the world I inhabit, just that it's a very different to the folk world, which is, ironically perhaps, my own imagined village. Folk is home; folk is family, belonging, community; folk is where I came from , but it's not what I am, or where I am, or even who I am, but it's an essential part of all these things. Folk is a continuity of a process, at least perceived, wherein at least the notion of The Tradition becomes possible, wherein we might glimpse something wondrous & truly sublime and become part of that experience however so briefly. Folk empowers that notion, which, to me, is essential to the well-being of my human soul. Folk is the past within us, some of us at any rate, within me certainly, which informs my beggarly place in the overall scheme of things - woolly jumpers, dreary monologues, hands-off proprietorial nonsense and all. Folk is big enough, and small enough, for it all.

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: glueman
Date: 30 May 08 - 07:44 AM

You touch on some important points. If folk is your link to permanence, lineage, the transcendent it's fulfiling a vital role. Where I part with many is that, like creationists who see only dragons in the fossil record, I fail to see any historical strata as being more 'real' than now. I can hear echoes back in folk but they're my soundings.

Fantasy is much under appreciated in this country. Peter Woodcock in his book 'This Enchanted Isle' maps British visionaries against the onslaught of (for example) CIA funded Abstract Expressionism which sought to quell the Commie undertones of romanticism with its shamanistic belief in barbed nature and I'd argue we're still under the thrall of tattooed nation 'realism' in TV and film which is no mirror to England I'd recognise or acknowledge. It's a top down hegemony that only looks like it's bottom up folk work.

The important thing is that the Imagined Village contains imagination and it isn't a wobbly line of spurious deduction and cod proofs. I trust my imagination to feed back what's 'right' without pecking orders or informed mediation.

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 30 May 08 - 08:23 AM

Sorry there, Glueman - just lost my entire reply! It was a good one too. All that remains is the link to The Max Hunter Folk Song Collection & a quote from Mark E. Smith, or rather a non-quote as without the rest of it wouldn't make any sense.

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Marc Bernier
Date: 30 May 08 - 09:08 AM

Oh, this has been such an enjoyable read. Thank you. However for my own 2 cents, I once managed to offend the group of people I was trying to with the following statement. A folk tradition ceases to be when you remove it from the kitchen, or Fo'c'sle, and put it on stage. It the becomes performance art. To take a 150 year old song or chanty, spend a year rehearsing a beautiful and complicated vocal arrangement complete with poly-phonics, and present it in a concert hall for 6,000 people while playing $5,000 hand made guitars, is not really keeping alive any folk tradition. It's just making money, not unlike the Rolling Stones.

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: glueman
Date: 30 May 08 - 09:23 AM

Some great treatments of old songs there Sedayne, I could listen to that stuff weaving its magic all day. Horrible when words fall into the pit, as they've done on more than one occassion here, a complete bastard. I agree with Marc's point too but maybe less strongly, re-cycling doesn't have to end with Sting, Paul Simon or (is there a pit deep enough?) the Swingle Singers.

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Deckman
Date: 30 May 08 - 09:29 AM

After reading Don Firth's (and others) adroit posting, I was going to add something brilliant, but my tongue got twisted up in my eye teeth and I couldn't see what I was saying! Bob(deckman)Nelson

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: GUEST,Tom Bliss
Date: 30 May 08 - 06:42 PM

"To take a 150 year old song or chanty, spend a year rehearsing a beautiful and complicated vocal arrangement complete with poly-phonics, and present it in a concert hall for 6,000 people while playing $5,000 hand made guitars, is not really keeping alive any folk tradition. It's just making money, not unlike the Rolling Stones."

It may not be about keeping alive any tradition, but it's not just about making money.

It's about making music - which is a wonderful, joyous thing to do - on your own, with 5 friends, in a small theatre, in a stadium - wherever.

There is nothing wrong with performance art, and artists are entitled to whatever they can earn.

Getting to the point where you can play to 6,000 people takes a MASSIVE amount of talent, hard work, tenacity, sacrifice, effort, passion and love.

6,000 people will not come unless you're bloody good.

It depresses me utterly to see posts like this.

Big acts do no damage to the tradition at all. They have nothing to do with it.

But petty sniping certainly does, because it makes people who love folk music look like...

(supply own word)

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego
Date: 30 May 08 - 06:53 PM

It may not be scholarly,
It may not be totally accurate,
It may not be politically correct,
And it may not please many; but, I'll say what my old pappy once said: "I'll know it when I hear it."

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Stringsinger
Date: 30 May 08 - 07:16 PM

Jassplayer, I think a real "worksong" is one in which you can transport a string bass over your head and play "Big Noise From Winetka" with drumsticks at the same time.

Or you could pull it along with it containing Joe Venuti cement.

"They" didn't call him "slow-drag" Pavageaux for nothing.

You know, the proverbial "they".

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Stringsinger
Date: 30 May 08 - 07:20 PM

Don, was it Carl Sandburg who first called himself in concert a "Folksinger"? (Circa 1920's when "American Songbag"..my bible came out).   Yeah, that German guy did call it "volkslied" didn't he?

Frank

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Marc Bernier
Date: 30 May 08 - 09:10 PM

"Getting to the point where you can play to 6,000 people takes a MASSIVE amount of talent,"

Or someone with alot of money behind you.

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: GUEST,Tom Bliss
Date: 31 May 08 - 12:59 AM

I'm sorry, but you don't get a a lot of money behind you if you're not good enough (and you probably are if you 'spend a year rehearsing a beautiful and complicated vocal arrangement complete with poly-phonics'). Saying it's just about money merely comes over like sour grapes and does none of us any favours.

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 31 May 08 - 06:29 AM

om,
Sorry 'sme again.
Your earlier statement implies that 'success' depends on talent, which is patently not the case.
There really are too many imponderables to support such an idea.
In Ireland at present undoubtedly the most popular performer is Christie Moore who can command a 6,000 audience, yet, off the top of my head I can name you dozens of performers who are far more talented, hard working, tenacious, sacrificing, passionate and loving about the music.
Among many other factors, success can depend on having a good agent, knowing the right people and simply being in the right place at the right time.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 31 May 08 - 06:30 AM

Sorry,
Finger slipped; should read Tom
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Marc Bernier
Date: 31 May 08 - 07:11 AM

Tom; I know who I was trying to insult when I initially made the comment, probably ten years ago now. It worked. My apologies if I got you going with my post, but I started my post explaining it was an insult. I'm not going to give anymore details on a public forum because That would dig up issues that are not necessarily current. However at the time my comment was not very far of base, though it was meant to offend.

Cheers

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: GUEST,aeola2
Date: 31 May 08 - 02:04 PM

I'm not in favour of '' folk music'' but rather '' music for folk''. However I will place some of the comments in my prosopgraphy.

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 31 May 08 - 02:33 PM

Isn't all music 'music for folk' in the loosest definition of the term?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: glueman
Date: 31 May 08 - 02:41 PM

Can I say I think these endless definitions of what folk music is are quite useful? At the very least they reveal folk won't be proscribed by any group or individual who seek to impose a definition, which is off itself an extremely folkish response to authority. Even authority which claims it is a grass roots one abandons all credibility. Which is all very heartwarming.
As you were.

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Def Shepard
Date: 31 May 08 - 02:48 PM

glueman said, At the very least they reveal folk won't be proscribed by any group or individual who seek to impose a definition.

Not for want of trying, as I've seen and heard many times in my life

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 31 May 08 - 03:45 PM

"At the very least they reveal folk won't be proscribed by any group or individual who seek to impose a definition."
A definition isn't imposed - it defines.
If it is wrong or inadequate, simple - give us an alternative one - won't hold my breath though.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Don Firth
Date: 31 May 08 - 03:50 PM

Referring to Marc Bernier's post above (30 May 08 - 09:08 a.m.), I'm afraid he is the victim of some kind of stereotyped thinking.

On a balmy summer evening in 1963, I sang several folk songs and ballads to a crowd of some 6,000 people (police crowd estimate) gathered on the large lawn/amphitheater in front of the Horiuchi mural at the Seattle Center on the occasion of one of the Wednesday evening Seattle Center Hootenannies. Most of the songs I sang that evening I had been singing for several years, but whether or not my renditions were "beautiful" I will leave for others to say. I was accompanying myself on a classical guitar, hand made in Madrid, that I had paid something like $350 for (I would probably have to pay ten times that for the same guitar now). I was not singing complex vocal arrangements since I was singing solos, and the only polyphony involved was that I usually work out accompaniments in which, instead of merely strumming, I play specific strings or combinations of strings intended to harmonize with the melody.

I was one of about a dozen performers that evening, some performing solo, some in groups. As to having large amounts of money behind us, I believe we did have the resources of—what was it? The Seattle Parks Department? I'm not sure. They were trying to provide attractions for the general public to encourage them to make use of the relatively new facilities at the Seattle Center (a legacy from the Seattle World's Fair the previous year), and we were asked to perform because we were all fairly well-known singers of folk songs in the area. As to being paid vast quantities of money (on the order of, say, the Rolling Stones), if I remember correctly, we were each paid $25 per performance.

I believe that if anyone in that audience became interested enough in folk music to want to learn to sing and play folk songs (and although we weren't paid a great deal for these performances, I usually gained a guitar student or two almost every time I did one), then we were not just "making money," we were helping to keep alive the folk tradition.

Folk songs do not need to be confined to the kitchen, the fo'c'sle, the front porch of a cabin in the Ozarks, or sung at the rump of a mule while plowing the south forty for then to still be folk songs.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Def Shepard
Date: 31 May 08 - 04:01 PM

JC said "If it is wrong or inadequate, simple - give us an alternative one - won't hold my breath though.

I don't believe that giving "us" (who's us?) a new definition was glueman's intention, he merely said that he found the endless definitions usful.

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: glueman
Date: 31 May 08 - 04:20 PM

Quite so DS. To take Jim's point a definition needs a definer, and folk appears highly resistent to packaging and labels - which may be its defining characteristic! Not to mention the thing that gives it longeivity.
Anyway, I've yet to see a definition from a credible source that covers all the bases but the search is a fascinating one.

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: GUEST,wigwambam
Date: 31 May 08 - 04:42 PM

'A definition isn't imposed - it defines.'

but it's who sets the definition that matters.

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Def Shepard
Date: 31 May 08 - 04:54 PM

exactly, wigwambam
the music itself is above any definition. I believe it was Dave Swarbrick who said "You can't hurt the music" and I'll add by saying put all the definitions you want on the music,you can define until the cows come home , but you can't hurt the music.

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: glueman
Date: 31 May 08 - 04:58 PM

Agreed.

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 01 Jun 08 - 01:35 PM

"but it's who sets the definition that matters."
Utter bloody nonsense - what does it matter who defines anything, from folk music to Brussels sprouts. What matters is whether it defines the subject adequately, which it does absolutely.
The definition of the word 'folk' has been in existence and internationally recognised for over a century and a half; it has been applied to music and internationally recognised for over half a century.
If somebody asked me what folk music was I would point to that definition, then to the hundreds of books on the subject (many of them bearing the word 'folk' in their titles), then to the recorded examples - where would you lot point them to?
Tom Bliss has admitted that the music he describes as 'folk' in no way fits the long-established and accepted definition, but follows this up with the somewhat feeble argument that he is justified in using the term because of its constant misuse.
Sorry folks, folk will remain folk as defined until smebody gets off their arse and redefines it.
Misuse is ignorance, deliberate misuse is wilful ignorance.
Despite constant mis-usage genealogy will remain never be an 'ology'.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 01 Jun 08 - 02:04 PM

I think it does matter, Jim. A definition defines, but like history written by the winners, "whose" definition informs the acceptability of the definition, for better or for worse. I think we are witnessing the tyres of some of the old definitions being kicked.
(just give me the metaphor, I'll mix it in).

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: GUEST,wigwambam
Date: 01 Jun 08 - 02:11 PM

Jim Carroll you have no understanding of semantics or of the ideological components inherent in the use of language.

You come up with some quite startling bilge.

'Misuse is ignorance, deliberate misuse is wilful ignorance.'

Deliberate misuse can often be propaganda which I suspect is what youre iup to on this site.

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 01 Jun 08 - 02:33 PM

All of what you say may well be true.
Simple solution - define what you mean by 'folk song'.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Gene Burton
Date: 01 Jun 08 - 02:37 PM

100