Disclaimer: I'm an unrepentant socialist...

As has already been pointed out, conservative folk-songs are known as country music--and tend to enjoy much more wide-spread popularity (and readio play) than yer basic left-of-center singer-songwriter stuff. It has a lot to do with "formatting"--I would argue that the country and MOR music industry are a great deal more censorious than the folk music world. Remember the fuss a few years ago when Garth Brooks released a song called "We Shall Be Free" that seemed to imply, in a single line, support for gay rights? The only reason it was released at all was that, as the number one country megastar in the world, Garth had the clout to do so (just one of various ways he's tried to influence the industry). It was the first of his songs in a long time that not only _didn't_ make number one, it didn't even make the top ten. Probably because it didn't get played by many key country stations, and didn't get "heavy rotation" on most others, unlike his red, white and blue stuff.

I am not using "conservative" as a pejorative term, since there are of course many wonderful songs that don't express anything but conventional sentiments. But in much of the mainstream music industry, there are lines over which you do not step...

There is, however, considerable evidence that its not that conservative songs don't exist, but that us folksingers don't care to sing them. (It seems you have to go back about two centuries, to the Jacobite rebellion in particular, to get away from that "left-right" thing. Few people in their right minds would argue that "Bonnie Prince Charlie" was worth the blood shed on his behalf (the ever-quotable Dick Gaughan has said "he was about as much use to Scotland as a dose of cholera") but we don't really need to take sides on the merits of the cause, it's clear that the Jacobites had better songs, so we sing them. )

Regarding the alleged biases of collectors--well the songs they got would be reflective of where they went looking for them, wouldn't they? The late Peter Bellamy was interested in this topic, and studied it by bypassing collectors altogether and analysing the repertoires of three very traditional English singers: Harry Cox, Sam Larner and the Copper family, who "collected themselves" (they have a family songbook they started in 1922). Note that these are all southern English rural singers, not a strongly unionized area. Anyway he classified 210 songs as either "content with one's lot" --'here's a health to our masters', "neutral" or "critical of the status quo". Of the latter songs he found exactly three, one of which was "Hard Times of Old England".

Course, if you analysed the repertoire of Aunt Molly Jackson, or Ian Robb for that matter, you'd get a different story. There are all kinds of "folk" out there, and if they have one thing in common, it's that they sing what they want to sing, (unless censored) and its one thing to say "you can't sing that song here"--this is common--but quite a different thing to say to someone "you _must_ sing such and such a song in your repertoire to show balanced viewpoints". Screw that, we are who we are.

The naturally short shelf-life of political, topical songs is of course a factor that results in the disappearance of most explicitly left- or right-wing songs shortly after their creation.

"Corporate Folk Songs"? Remember the little red book, "Songs of the IWW", with lots of Joe Hill and like that? I recently saw an unintentionally hilarious imitation of it called "Songs of the IBM". It was very clearly a 1930's PR exercise in the sincerest form of flattery. as the layout and format was the same as the Wobbly book, but of course blue instead of red. The "songs" themselves consisted of purple paeans (sp?) of praise to the top level IBM executives of the time, arranged in strict hierarchical order from the chairman on down...which pretty much illustrates why these never became folk songs. Who the hell would want to sing them?

Oh dear, I've gone on far too long... soapbox is getting slippery. Bill