I don't think sufficient appreciation has been expressed [indeed, none] to GSS for his service in reproducing Mr Bearman's important letter here. Thank you, Dick. I did not previously know Bearman's work, until I read his Folk Music Journal article above, & now this letter to EFDSS executive. Without purporting doctrinairely to take sides in the dispute, I think it obvious that he is serious scholar and researcher, whose depoliticising work could do much to restore the balance to this [what many people, incl me, have long regarded as] grossly over-politicised field, in which too many avowed Marxists [Seeger, MacColl, Lloyd, Gammon, Harker...] have for too long carried their own agenda to far too great an extent.

I should like, for a moment, to turn around the thread title to read "What is folk music not?'; to which I will, purely, or anyhow mainly, as a debate-inducer, suggest the answer "It is not Primarily Political."

~Michael~