"Ralph McTell's Peppers And Tomatos? will be sung long after most of the rap has vanished for two simple reason- it's transferable and it's in the best sense touching."

I'm a generation younger than most of McTell's fans and I don't know this song - neither, I'd bet, do most of my contemporaries.

And you can better your bottom euro that in the communities that rap sprang from, most people wouldn't have a clue who McTell was.

That's one of the problems of assuming "folk" is an - albeit contentious - genre rather than a description of a supposedly universal human process regardless of content.

Unlike some rap, most folk music, including the traditional stuff played by the most ardent of folk bus-spotters is not in any meaningful way folk music. It's hommage, hobbyism, pastiche, re-enactment and play-acting. Nothing wrong with any of these pastimes, but let's call a shovel a shovel...