Can I just say that I am MALE so sorry to the cool Scottish person who calls me a bonnie lass, I admit sometimes I am a drama queen and I do like to dress up as a lady, something I probably shouldnt confess, but I just want to say last time I checked, I had male reproductive organs.




Ok as for the post , I didn't expect to receive such hostile posts by some, and quite honestly many of the opposing arguments have widened my viewpoint so thanks. I have re read my post and I suppose it does have an air of snobbery, but believe you and me, from where im sitting in this house where the main meal is fish and fingers id like to resent that remark lololol (it's a joke b.t.w I am an arsey git sometimes)

let me just clarify that I said "some" of the people on the course neglect the decency and etiquette advocated by folk music. The majority are normal kids like me who piss their youth away with beer and fun, nothing wrong with that.(that isn't sarcastic, ill confess quite ignorantly and with a pretentious tone, that I am an incurable drunk)

I know people on the course, and they are brilliant and funny, and extremely `friendly. I certainly don't promote that the course should be abandoned. But my problem seems to focus around that its all exclusive to Newcastle and Glasgow (the latter being where I am hoping to study a humanities and social science degree)

I will admit that its out of jealously for my main repudiation, it's the ascendancy of some over others and the unfair representation and judgemental atmosphere the course creates. I'm currently studying history, economics and politics; I choose not to take the music course. Here is my confession; there is some strong hateful passion inside of me which fears being judged by a cruel and uncompromising world. The folk degree to me, someone who has never really engaged with other young folkies because there are none here (there all doing the degree lol) sees it as something only available to those who have connections. I probably have to much anger, probably responsive to exterior forces and being a hormonal young man., I have never had no one to direct me in my experience of the music world, my fathers Irish and that's the reason why I got into folk from listening to his Dubliners/ pogues records but other than that influence, I started going to clubs on my own when I was 15. The first encounter I had with another folkie was over the Internet, and he told me there were these alien things called "folk clubs". I was not raised with the tradition and thus I feel that's why I am more appreciative towards the underdog society and social benefits I find in folk music, not, the commercial bolox and fashion accessories music in general often portrays.

I have witnessed some people on the degree who have been booked to do gigs at clubs and out of sheer ignorance and egotism chose to drink their beers and smoke their cigarettes outside the venue (in the street) while the floor singers did their bit. 99% of the time i relish in listening to anyone of any ability because I like to look deeper than the sound and look at the entire presentation, what mental images ramify into the singers head and whether the songs of love they sing are reminiscent of some foreign girl on a summers day, or whether the song they sing is a dream they hold dear to their heart. The music expresses both elation and an intense pain which I feel some my own generation want to and seem ignorant off.


Ill admit I have a narrow view I only have a Selection of evidence and knowledge.

I am an egotistical narcissist like the rest of them and I to want to make it on the folk circuit, but there's something inside of me that cares little for joining the inner circle of musicians. I heard some new band advertise that they were doing a gig with "folk royalty" Eliza carthy, now the band (which shall be nameless) is an amazing band but to describe folk singers as "royalty" to me seems like a paradox of folk music. I am not criticising the carthy's but it's the idolatry that has creeped its way into folk music which I reject.

I will explicitly express my main disillusionment, it is the prospect of having to brown nose someone else to make it anywhere, I just have some innocent youthfulness that refuses to be a demagogue in music. I want to entertain, to love, to listen to everyday and feel a mutual catharsis that is experienced by all and not the select few.

These thoughts are typical of some youthful brat like me, I probably appear to be some ignorant communist with delusions of grandeur, I most probably am, but I posses an immense amount of fear and hatred of some aspects of society( we all do), my initial post undermined itself with its limited discussion and I am sorry to those who may have not got the jist of what I was trying to say.


Its all futile anyway, I am a naïve revolutionary who will never be content with the dictates of society, this is probably all to philosophical for some stupid discussion over the folk degree but its just one aspect of folk music which is, well I cant quite find the words, but is, for want for a better word, wrong.

I have no objection the study of music in general, but the two words "folk" "degree", they sound to me like the two words, "banjos" and "fun", lol sorry for the pun I am a banjo player myself.

Stacey McMullen