I think of folk as essentially a doing thang, rather like sex; maybe listening to folk is like erotica, in that it might inspire you to do the real thing - but there again I've always preferred the amateur / vintage / field-recorded stuff to the slick, glossy, professionalism which leaves me cold to be honest. It has been said that the essential difference between erotica and pornography is that whilst pornography exploits the subject as an object, erotica celebrates the object as a subject. Does folk (on any level) objectify its subjects or subjectify its objects?

I wonder, is all music like this? In the house, with one or two exceptions, I listen to anything but Designated Folk Music. I might play to occasional Peter Bellamy album, or Shirley & Dolly Collins, or Jean Ritchie, or Seamus Ennis, but as a rule folk as a recorded / performance medium bores me rigid. I like Jazz, Hip Hop, Dub Reggae, Early Classical, Ethnomusicology and other such Exotica - in other words music that I'm not involved in personally. Or maybe that's objectifying subjects? Or just a matter of individual taste anyway, which ultimately is all that matters. One man's fun with with a capital F. U. N is another man's hell with a capital H. E. L. L.