My 19-year old son just made a statement to someone who said that they weren't interested in politics, "why not, politics is life?". He's right, of course. The vast majority of folk music is about politics because it's about life. Folk music has always been about radical politics - the politics of the (often disenfranchised) common people with a grievance against the ruling classes. To say that folk music is conservative is a total distortion of history as anyone who has studied the history of radical politics (at least in the UK) will know. Read Hill. Read Tawney. Read any of the books of my son's degree course in History and Politics.

So, every time we sing a folk songs we are, in a way, making a political statement - about the lives of the people who created the music. So every folk song performance is a political rally - and long may it be so.