Just stayed up watching until 5am the excellent BBC4 "night" on American music that Hootenanny, I think, mentions above...

Absolutely this is "Folk" music ... I mean some of this material is English, Scots, Irish songs, preserved by settlers. What the difference is that different influences (Blues, etc) have then combined to put this zestful, accessible, relevance to the music...

What happened with English folk is that the late-Victorian, then current vogue, Music-hall type variations of folk songs were collected and have been preserved in aspic (at a point in time) as the definitive versions of how they must be played/ sung. But, prior to this people always had changed and altered forms of these songs That's why, by and large we have stagnation in English folk ... and why by and large, it is not going to be as entertaining to the majority of people as the abovementioned American "folk.."

Personally, I would love to see a British Coen brothers take English folk and do for it what "Oh Brother, Where Art thou?" did for popularising American, oh okay, "Roots" music!

Any film-makers on Mudcat?

Nem

PS: Just read Shirley Collins "America Across the Water" and bought the Tangle Eye Re-mix original Alan Lomax recordings - remix is out of stock apparently!