G'day again, michaelr,

I can see we are on the same wavelength about the loss of the diversity of German folk music. About the second setence in my usual 'rant' will point out that the "oompah" bands are not what I'm on about.

Particularly to this point, down in the Barossa Valley area of South Australia we have the wonderful BarossaDeutsch - religious refugees settled in the then-new colony bybthe agancy of Scottish Prebyterian Settlement groups ... who sent dour Scots to New Zealand - and gave us wine-making Germans! Unfortunately, the big wine companies now promote a sort of distorted Oktoberfest image, with ledrhosen-clad Bavarian bands ... and the real oldtimers resent the imposition of the music of those their ancestors fled.

I can't bring to mind any specific recordings that concentrate on the Germanic content. My aim has been to push these tunes back into the 'mainstream' (such as it is) of Australian folklore ... where they were before August 1914. I'll do a bit of a search on the Schusters and see what they have up on the web.

I didn't see Penny last night - she is involved with a lot of groups - so I did not get a chance to determine the limits of her mobility in San Francisco. I'll have to be on my home machine to to find her e-mail addie - and I had best follow up some suggestions I had back from a PM to Naemanson, who just passed through the SF area on his spell back in US, before heading back to Guam.

Regards,

Bob Bolton