Sorry Richard,
Didn't make my point too well.
The cantometrics team was set up to assess dominant features in traditional singing throughout the world.
'Wordy' was in no way a criticism, rather an observation that English language singing was 'word intensive' compared to, say Spanish Canto Hondo, which is largely musically dominated.
Traditional singers like Tom Lenihan constantly stressed that the object was to get the tune to fit the words, rather than the other way round.
The most extreme case of this was of two brothers, both excellent singers, we recorded here in Clare about thirty years ago. Between them they gave us around 20 songs – 10 of them to the same tune. They obviously regarded the tune as a vehicle for carrying the text.
As I said earlier, all too often, for me anyway, accompaniment quite often doesn't (accompany, that is), but rather, dominates the text rather than underlining it, which is probably why our English (and Irish and Scots) traditions are unaccompanied ones.
As far as folk rock went (t.b.t.g.), it was, for me, very much a case of totally overwriting the texts with (more often than not) overloud music.
Jim Carroll