An hour or more elapsed between when I started writing my last post and when I completed and submitted it -- I *am* at work, after all -- and quite a few messages appeared in the meanwhile. So, I have more comments.

This argument has popped up before, and as likely as not I've said the same things before (as have several others, I'm sure). No one is likely to change their mind.

There seems to be even more indignation about "false" (non-native) Scots-accent singing than there is about the Irish issue, but rarely any problem at all expressed over white and/or foreign singers performing blues, reggae, etc. Isn't it all the same thing? If John Mayall, Paul Butterfield, etc., can sing the blues in voices that are to some degree their own but also to some degree dictated by the tradition from which the songs arose, why can't Mick from Michigan or Tom from New Jersey perform Irish songs with the appropriate set of vowel and consonant sounds? Seems to me that part of a song's intended and traditional "sound" is a basic approach to the way words are pronounced.

True, a non-native's "song-Irish" (as opposed to "stage-Oirish") accent won't be truly authentic, because it's a *generic* accent, not specific to one Irish city or county as opposed to another. It's most obvious features will be basic elements common to *all* (or most) true regional Irish accents. But if it's heartfelt and appropriate to the singer's natural voice and to the material, not obviously "stagey" or put-on, I don't see any problem. Not unlike pop/rock/blues sngers using a "soul" accent that can't be specifically identified as Mississippi African-American or south-Alabama Caucasian, etc.

On the subject of bad accents in movies, let me observe that the *worst* examples of wildly incorrect accents have been Hollywood's efforts to portray New Orleanians. Trust me on this. "The Big Easy" may have provided the largest collection of different off-the-mark accents by a large cast of badly-coached actors (with plenty of help from the writer[s], who provided some embarrassingly patronizing and inappropriate dialog), but I think the single most abysmal single effort of all time was by Lawrence Harvey in some black-and-white film adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play.