I know what you mean by a sense of place - but to me it has always been to do with belonging and working out my own relationship with the landscape. Like I am made of the same stuff!

Sometimes traditional English music sounds to me, like the clay has got up and started walking around! It speaks of the land where it comes from, perhaps because much of it was written in a time where the players, singers and originators of the music had a much closer relationship to their landscape than many of us now have.

This issue of identity or rather struggling with a lack of a sense of identity is central, I believe to a lot of problems in modern life.
Well, certainly "my" modern life anyway


Chris Wood did a very interesting piece based on the similarity between regional accents and the landscape that those people were from. He then produced musical phrases for his piece based on the intonation of spoken phrases - terrific stuff I thought

I believe that one of the main aspects of the pull of traditional English music for me is essentially about identity

PS I only keep saying "English" coz thats the music that does it for me - probably equally applies to any other traditional music.