"If folk music is seen by the next generation of folk musicians as nothing more than a performance art then, to my mind, something is lost."


the thing is of course that traditional folksongs have brought forward some very great performances. I made fun of The Ballad of Tam Linn, but if you ever saw Ewan MacColl sing it - you saw somebody apply himself and apply himself with the same committment as a great shakespearian actor doing one of the "big" speeches.

Mind you he's had his critics on Mudcat - people who he was rude to, people who say he did the wrong kind of Scottish accent.....they say nobody kicks a dead dog, but it makes you wonder.

What exactly are you suggesting that trad folk songs become like Beowulf and Chaucer - and the province of academics? Perhaps the trad singarounds should be just for the tradspotters who don't care that its being read from an exercise book, by someone with no expression - (as long as its trad - its better than Tom Paxton) - they just want to be reminded of its existence by like minded souls. I think that's fair enough - its a free society and if thats what they want - they're entitled to it.

I don't like their tendency to say that everything else isn't folk music, but I'm getting used to it as a Mudcat regular.