I should clarify (although I thought my first post did). I actually know that it isn't a new word, but I couldn't fit the question I wanted to ask, namely ""Anglicana" - is this a fresh designation for a type of music and if so is it useful?" into the title box! I also know its a title of an Eliza Carthy CD, but the apparently new (on me) usage is that it describes the type of music that Eliza Carthy generally plays (a bit of a puzzler there as she does do a range of cross-cultural items) maybe meaning something like "of and arising out of the English tradition and/or the indigenous and internal cultures of England".

I think it probably is useful in this sense in that it avoids in a different way to that which I have previously suggested the need to distinguish betweeen "folk" and "non-folk" (an area where many on this forum are apparently simply not prepared to accept the normal academic distinctions, apparently for no other reason than cussedness), and does provide a label that avoids the obvious nonsense of labelling English folk as "Americana". Naturally what some English bands play will be Americana - I think at once of the Dartford Ramblers - and it also avoids the issue of calling it "American folk" when it may not be folk, and although the music is American they are not.

On balance I think at present I tend to favour it, despite the faint odour of churchiness (and hence vicars and choirboys) about it.

Back to you chaps and chapesses.