Sedayne, sorry but that video, to me, is highly unpleasant.

Folk music, again, to me, is music sung by people, whoever they may be, which relates to what is happening around them. Songs that you can get an idea of history from and especially songs that the 'ordinary' person of that time can relate to.

They can be songs about local dances, birds, hedgerows or wars. They can be about unrest or about how society has been so unhappy and the causes behind that unhappiness, it doesn't matter.

A folk singer, personal opinion once more, is one who takes his/her observations about the time they live in, out to the people.

An exceptional folk singer is one who is able to rouse passions in those people, so much so that they will take to the streets in a determination to try and change their world.

When I showed my daughter the 'Give Peace A Chance' video she couldn't believe how people took to the streets back then, how they took it into their own hands to try and change the world, and how they managed it too in some case, such as helping to bring about the end to the Vietnam War.

Now, The Sound Of Silence has never been so deafening!

We have let it all go, we have turned away, buried our heads. And the generation who DID take to the streets back then seem to have given up, become jaded and indifferent, apathetic and bitter.

Where is their belief?
Where is their passion?
Why was it not passed down to their children?

Sorry Shimrod, but we need the people and songwriters like Lennon back, we need those with the belief that Lennon had, that the world CAN be changed, and it can.

If John Lennon were here today, looking at what was going on around him, I doubt very much that he'd be silent. I don't hear Dylan's voice raised in anger anymore, I hear no-one's voice, just this deathly, deathly silence.


Tony Stringfellow

From Tony's blog, his poem that asks the question we should all be asking:

VOICE? by Tony Stringfellow


"I hear no voice

As I turn my ears to the crowd,

Just a silent muttering

Sighs of discontentment in a maze of opinions.

Pale faces of placid expression

Mouthing words of shallow intention,

Eyes lost in a glaze of chat room jargon.

Where is your voice?



In a world wide connection

Comes the distraction,

Souls lost in a web of virtual backchat.

Faces masked by an illusion of user names and passwords.

Your words are safe within their cyber disguise,

The narrator cannot be traced,

He cannot be faced to account for his debate,

Where is your voice?


Lennon called for peace,

Geldof called for food to end starvation,

Bono called for money to banish poverty to extinction.

Dylan called to us all,

The angry protest singer

Who denied the label.

Joan Baez marched in anger

Hand in hand with each rebel.

Punks stood up to be counted - in zips,

The causes of youth dripping like spit from their lips.

They brandished sex pistols at authority

And were obscene with clarity.

They all had a voice!



Where is the spunk of youth?

It is twitching on keypads,

Over texted on phones,

Lost in reverberating drones and monotones

Of abbreviated conversation

With meaningless direction,

A wasted labrinth of vocabulary.

Where is your voice?



Where is the passion of protest,

The scream of discontent,

The eruption of brave intent

That gives you breath to breathe?

Where are the violent shouts of compassion

That vomits from the essence of youthful abstraction?

Where are the flag bearers of your minds?

Where is your voice?"