My earliest experience of music was to various family members singing unaccompanied. Most of my subsequent ones (until the family bought a grampophone) involved a piano, often played by someone who had a good ear, sense of melody and rhythm and who could usually vamp accompanying chords with some versatility; much like most guitarists one hears in sessions. Much later in like I found out that many of these items were called folk music; many still are.

A few folkies I know are quite accomplished on guitar and that is what I first heard them play. Occasionally they found a piano that was in tune and within the area used by others playing/singing in sessions and they would play along with great skill and taste and to great effect. What I found interesting was their use of chords on the piano far exceeded what most guitarists (even themselves, when on guitar) seemed to think worthwhile. Most of these folkies now play other, quite different, instruments and I suspect they do so because they want to achieve particular experiences (like most musicians down the ages) but also because the instruments are now freely available. Which hasn't always been the case.

Pianos have been a status symbol for the middle class and I suspect many folkies have secret suspicions about the use of pianos in "their" music. It's been quite a while since guitars shed their associations with the middle classes so, these days, they seem much more acceptable.

And now I'm off to play at the National, where I'll no doubt trot out (on my concertina; now there's a middle class product of the Industrial Revolution) at least one Morris tune, which I'm told was specially written (on piano) by Percy Grainger; English Country Gardens.

And I've got my coat!

Cheers, Rowan