Just to confuse matters further, I'm a Marxist - now that I've said it once, I'm even an avowed Marxist! But my sympathies are almost entirely with Bearman, because on balance I think he's more or less correct. The tone of that letter is a bit extreme, but I think it reflects the frustration of someone who had identified actual errors in a respected work, only to find that it carried on being respected - albeit with occasional nods to his critical work, as if he was simply expressing an alternative point of view.

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."

Here's Peter Bellamy, from the clip uploaded by Suibhne recently:

'Songs of political comment have always been part of the tradition. The only thing I would take exception to is the strongly left-wing movement that would like to see that sort of song take over and eradicate non-political folk song - because non-political folk song is the majority of folk song. If you look at the traditional repertoire in detail, for every song that says "Isn't life terrible, let's do something to change it" there are at least twelve that say "Hey, isn't this great down here!"'

I tend to agree.