"...so don't sing them."

Up until this point, David, I thought there might be some hope for you. But that tears it!

I have made a career out of singing folk songs and ballads from England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Canada, and American and Anglo-American songs and ballads from all over this country. This numbers several hundred songs altogether, and I'm still learning new ones. My repertoire also includes a few songs in French, one in Serbo-Croatian, and another in Czech. Not only do I sing these songs, I go to the effort of learning the backgrounds of them as well.

The material I choose to sing was found sufficiently suitable for me to be asked to do a television series on folk music on educational television (my local PBS affiliate, my series funded by the Seattle Public Library), which I did. They were apparently acceptable, because I was later asked to do further programs. And as aforementioned, my singing—including songs for which I assumed an appropriate accent or dialect—was apparently sufficiently enjoyable by general audiences for me to have made a living at singing.

David, you say you learn about folk music by watching television. How shall I break this to you?

I DO the kind of folk music programs that you just watch!

By the way, two of my most requested songs have been "Bonnie Dundee" and "McPherson's Farewell." I have just recently learned "The Braes of Killiecrankie" and I have not yet sung it for a paying audience. I am currently learning a number of songs from The Corries' two song books. Accent and all!

No one! NO bloody person on the face of this earth is going to tell me what I should and should not sing. If I like a song well enough to want to learn it and sing it, the only thing that would stop me from singing it in public would be if the song does not get a good response from my audience.

So as far as you are concerned, David, I will give your remarks all the consideration they deserve. I'll let you work that out for yourself.

Don Firth

P. S. Having listened to you on MySpace, I'm quite sure that you have no idea of the amount of work and thought that goes into learning a song, studying it in all its aspects and deciding how best to present it, and then working out a guitar accompaniment—not just plunking chords, but developing an arrangement that supports the song without distracting from it). And having gone to this effort, and having been gratified by the audience response when I do these songs, you are now telling me that I should abandon them on the basis of your narrow-minded ideas of "cultural purity?"

For your own efforts at singing, you might consider the words of a prominent singer whose repertoire consists largely of folk songs:

"The value lies inherent in the song, not in the regional mannerisms or colloquialisms. No song is ever harmed by being articulated clearly, on pitch, with sufficient control of phrase and dynamics to make the most of the poetry and melody, and with an instrumental accompaniment designed to enrich the whole effect."