Aha! At last something in common, as I cannot dance either. Nor sing, but I do play instruments after a fashion.

I cannot take a view on the question of how many if any folk songs originated in print. I do feel certain that non-literate people can make songs. This is how the earliest poetry I know of was composed, ie sagas and so on, recited by 'bards' and telling history and tradition.

But a view that they originated in print might undermine attempts (as per Lloyd, perhaps) to assert that old folk songs were in some Marxist sense representative of the dialectic. On that basis it would be disturbing to some, and please be assured that I am not not not hinting at any posters here, just making a general observation. I have been reading what they call 'revisionist' histories of blues music (often treated as 'folk music' of a sort, which raise somewhat analogous issues.


Maybe a thread on that issue (the issue of how much if any folk originated on broadsheets) might be interesting, but not sure if my blood pressure could cope with reading the high spirited and passionate posts.


Oh good, the sun's come out. :)