but I also think that many of the current crop of younger singers and players of traditional music are happy with an increasingly codified sound.

When I recently expressed the opinion that Jim Causley's music was tidy, well-ordered musical MOR blandness for the well-behaved Folk Fan insider for whom the lawlessness of the feral wilderness is anathema (see HERE) I was roundly denounced & openly insulted by an apoplectic Joan Crump - hitherto a Mudcat friend who hasn't had a good word to say about me publicly or privately since. As Spleen says, and as I pointed out at the time HERE this wasn't to slag anyone off, just point out what is, in any case, a salient truth regarding the nature of Folk Music which stands in very stark contrast to the provenance of such material for which Comrade Easby rightly calls for a recognition of in an above post. But provenance is bigger than a few well-sourced musical notes reduced to musical blandness by the favoured initiates into the heady realms of corporate Folk Celebrity.

Once again I'm listening to Leadbelly singing John Hardy, even louder than last time. Would that others did likewise.