Sorry, didn't realise I was cookieless above(second April 14 guest).

No disrespect to Blacks/Asians etc. but they are not from Europe. How can they share our folk heritage? Why do the lefty liberals always have to be so PC and emphasize that the non-Whites have to be a part of everything that is ours.

" No disrespect " almost always precedes out and out disrespect.

I have several black mates who do come from Europe, Wolverhampton to be precise. You cannot tell by the colour of their skin how much of my history and culture they share. I go to a lot of folk festivals around England and particularly enjoy sessions in pubs where there is a good proportion of "General Public", i.e. where you have to do songs that other people like. I often hear regular folkies do the odd Bob Marley song ( Redemption Song, 3 Little Birds, Dont Worry 'bout a Thing), but then again Bob Marley had a white parent. I am Scottish and Bob Marley had Scottish grandparents. Perhaps he and I share more common culture and history than I do with our anonymous guest from who knows where. Perhaps anon guest will share with us what his untainted heritage and his music is, but I doubt it.

On a BBC documentary a couple of years ago I remember Dick Gaughan and Maya Angelou at a Burns Supper in Ayrshire. A great Black American icon reading Burns, but then she said it was her earliest and strongest influence.

Then again Gaughan is from Edinburgh and Glasgow people, like me, have never been that keen on people from there. You can always find ways to be different from anyone else but our shared humanity massively outweighs our differences.

To return the discussion to Azizi's original post I think that this is another of those threads that fragments on peoples different positions on what is folk music. At one extreme we have people who state the only legitimate folk music is what was sung by Dorset farm labourers 200 years ago, and then only if it was collected by one of the musical anthropologists of the time. If you take the view of folk music as people playing and singing basically acoustic music which tells of peoples lives then there are a number of people currently involved all around the UK.