Mad Alex: nominations(under the current sisyems) are not defined by mass voy=tes. On the albino bunny question(which I have stuck my neck out and complained about) there was no question of a mass vote.I doubt if even one of the voters thought the White Hare was a trad song. What I imagine happened is that a very small number of voters, say five or so, thought it might be a good idea if the White Hare won the trad category, and decided to vote that way. Add that to a handful of fans who voted for their favourite, another five, and there's the ten you need. The votes are spread so thin (350 votes spread over many thousand possible tracks) that it doesn't take many votes to get in the top four.
Ruth Archer: I am very sorry if I gave the impression I thought your horizons were bounded by Cambridge and Celtic Connections. When I said "just because you don't see them at Cambridge " I meant "you" as in "one". None of us see trad performers much on Radio 2, but that doesn't prove they don't exist, that was my point I am saying that the Radio 2 set-up(MH programme and Awards) is moving the scene inexorably away from the British folk teadition, and towards a set of performance styles which are typefied by those who play at those festivals. And no, I dont say Mike Harding and Cambridge don't cover traditional folk music, They do, a lot of it. What I am saying is that every year a bit more trad mat erial is discarded, and replaced with a bit more other stuff. So a scene that was 90% trad-orientated, in say 1960, is being publicly presented now in the media as being 90% contemporary-orientated.