Er...I think you'll find that Loreena plays many, many instruments Howard.

This isn't about Loreena though, it's about condescending attitudes, for me at least.

"Like much modern commercial music, it makes a nice sound but places no demands on the listener."

Hang on a tick, I've heard much traditional music from the English folk world that makes me want to slit my wrists! Some of it is dirge like, depressing and downright boring.

There are brilliant songs in all genres, and there are bloopers too.
I've sat through many a folk/trad performance where I've wanted to run away. Equally, I've sat through others that have had me sitting on the edge of my chair with the sheer beauty of it all. But many of the artists who are being ridiculed in here could also have me sitting on the edge of my chair with the beauty of their music.

Someone wrote to me last night and said that I needed to open my eyes, to learn.   

Well, pardon me, but I have both my eyes and my ears open, and I love music from all genres, not just one. I don't think that English Traditional is better than Irish, Scottish or American. It's all one and the same, a music that comes from the people themselves and is loved by many of the people.

In England, it is loved by far fewer though, and maybe it's time to start looking into why that is.

Maybe all these ideas about 'putting demands on the listener' have had the opposite effect, and most listeners have thought "Blimey, I got the message at Verse 15, will someone please tell him to stop!"

Music is to be loved and enjoyed, surely, not *just* studied. And *that* is what I see so often in the English folk world, the 'study' of the music rather than the sheer passion.

AND....you're not 'permitted' to swoon over it, or the performers, because if you do, then you'll be hanged, drawn and quartered and your head placed on a pole outside The Tower, but that's mild compared to what would happen if you DARE to have a sense of humour about it...you truly don't want to know what would happen there...

:0)

We have a 'Celtic Music' CD in The National Trust. Our customers love it, and so do I. Sooooo calming, and before I know where I am, I'm drifting away with Rob Roy up in the heather, whilst trying to concentrate on the price of English Honey and things that go bump in the night..