Filming big folk concerts is crap: discuss!
Is this the way to present folk music (which is special and totally different): as if it was just the same? This is a question that is raised in a lot of posts on this thread, explicitly and implicitly. Interesting, perhaps? Is the Albert Hall or the Cambridge Folk Festival, or whatever, the yardstick by which to judge music which is meant to be seriously culturally embedded?
   On the Radio 3 discussion thread, where a few hardline classicists have queried what folk is doing in the Proms at all, we have seen the decision being defended by folkies pointing out that half of Bellowhead have got degrees in Folkology at the University of Folkiness or Whatever, as if that was a Good Thing.Is that the solution, or is that part of the problem? Is this kind of "arranged folk" in "high places" really the direction that folk music is going to go? And if so, do we all want to follow?