Well why should race dictate what we like and what we play. There is a black guy plays regularly at the club I go at Loughborough - - but he plays a sort of flamenco-ish sort of music.

I'm by descent I guess Irish , but my heart sinks when the uillean pipes walk into any folk club I'm in. My Mum used to sing Slow Boat to China doing the dishes - not the Dubliners songbook, not a jig dancer in the house.

For years in America, the acoustic blues was the pre-occcupation of white kids like Koerner, Ray and Glover. although I can see it was maybe more marketable for record companies than black practitioners - the line we were being sold was that Black people looked upon the country blues as the music of repression and the awful past. I notice Eric Bibb doesn't cite exclusively black players as his influences.

In England , look at the ton of shit Jack Hudson has been forced to eat, by the so called guardians of a tradition that for most of us doesn't extend back to our parents. I've lost times I've heard him referred to and sneered at as a 'pseudo yank'. All because God bestowed gifts of singing and a guitar playing on a guy born in Derby rather than Detroit.

Its not like we're all peasantry and we only hear one kind of music. Probably the most successful reggae band in the world is UB40, and the two main guys out of that were Ian Campbell's kids - he of the Ian Campbell folk group - Swarb's first gig.

Are you trying to tell me there are no black kids in Chicago who want to dance like Michael Flatley? I can't believe the folk scene is that sad and insular.