Sorry Leveller; cross posted;
"I find the use of the term 'landfill' for something that you personally don't like is extremely offensive"
Tough tittie - I have found terms like 'folk police' and 'finger-in-ear' and 'purist' extremely offensive down the years, but have had to learn to live with them as it seems to go with the territory. I find it offensive to drive half way across the county only to find some burke serenading the fluff in his navel with some sort of indefinable dirge when I have been promised an evening of folk song. I find it offensive when, after 35 years of field work I am told by some sedentary pontificator that I have rigged the evidence.
I have long come to the conclusion that these debates aren't for the faint-hearted and learned to live with it - suggest you do the same.
Your particular brand of music may be worth listening to if we are allowed to judge it on its own merits, but we are not being given the opportunity to do so while it is being passed off as folk music, so as far as I'm concerned 'landfill' will suit as well as any.
"It's folk, Jim - but not as you know it! "
See what I mean - define your terms.
Paul:
"even by your very tough and narrow definition."
As a researcher my definition is fairly narrow because that's what I do - research folk traditions (though I confess that moving to Ireland has forced me to rethink some of the ideas I have previously had - another story).
As a singer, club organiser and listener, my definition is not particularly narrow - I cut my teeth on MacColl and Seeger who have individually probably written more songs than any other performer on the folk scene. I listened to the new songs with pleasure, sang them (and still do), helped sell 'New City Songster', as far as I know the only magazine regularly produced to circulate new songs made in the folk idiom; I even tried (and failed miserably) to write some myself. I believe that without new songs the revival would be no more than a musical version of 'The Sealed Knot'.
My gripe is that much of what I have heard (and heard argued for) owes nothing whatever to the tradition, it certainly doesn't sound like it - fair enough, but I'd rather be doing something else and I resent being conned by being told it is folk song.
If you are presenting songs that I can identify with folk, you have my support and gratitude (can't listen to anything at the moment - my computer sound system is up the pictures).
If my side of the revival fails I will be very sorry, but it has to fail on it's own merits and not because it has been used as a dumping ground for something else.
Jim Carroll