Buck Mulligan: you seem to be implying that St Anne's Reel was written by a French Canadian. I sthere any evidence for that?
Richard Bridge: a fair question. I am a musical dilettante, a serious multi-ethnic folk music junkie. I have played professionally inthe areas of jazz, blues, Irish, English, old time American, bluegrass, cajun and zydeco. I've organised countless street/carnival bands, using a percussion mixture based on samba, Cuban, English-speaking Caribbean, traditional British, and bhangra.The brass and other melody instruments on top of that have played in a huge variety of styles, and also I have written a lot of original pieces. I have also written vast reams of ephemeral music for theatre shos over the tears. So basically I like learning, and attemting to assimilate, a lot of kinds of wetehnic music(which is what I love, and also the only way I know how to make a living). So I guess the Jack-of-all-trades approach puts me more in the McGrath half of this argument.
    But, on the other hand, the work I've done in reviving and nurturing traditional English music(especially that of the northwest) is something different, undertaken almost as a moral or sacred duty which I must admit I dont fully understand, and can't really rationalise. I do get huge pleasure(not to mention the sin of pride) when youngsters learn old tunes from me and then pass them on themselves. All that "folk" thing means a lot to me. And, sitting back and taking a cool look at how I've spent the last forty years, it is bleeding obvious that I have spent a lot more time on the music of the land of my fathers(and mothers) than could be strictly justified on purely musical(or professional) grounds. So I'm definitely in your "stick to your own culture" camp as well. Except, of course, I didnt learn English music from my dad, any more than I leant blues from him.
So I'm firmly in both the current categories, and will continue to be. Sitting on the fence has traditionally been the least comfortable option. But there you go.