Dave the Gnome: I'll PM you my phone number so we can talk about this. Personally, I would happily locate you a modestly priced very genuine African or Asian act, and drive them up to Manchester myself for the crack. You have identified accurately a very real problem: that a lot of black and minorty acts are professionalised in a sort of showbiz/folkloric kind of way, which has been devised to suit funders/civic festivals/worksops(of a certain kind etc). But in a folk club you might well want to hear some nice real people singing some nice real down home songs. You don't want a grand or two's worth of zebra skins, ostrich feathers and renactments of pieces of folklore(often far removed from the culture of people renacting them). These exciting "acts" may be wonderful on a summers day on stage at a festival, but I feel something else is needed as well. Basically, the Coppers or the McPeakes, shall we say, but from Zimbabwe or Kurdistan. And I think if festivals and clubs would support acts like that, then what larks,eh? And what a poke in the eye for the BNP, who think such people should be deported.