"would you sing a song in dialect?"

Um, no, it just wouldn't feel right to me. Probably because you can't sing a dialect song without doing the accent. It would be like cutting off my nose to spite my face: I like folk for its adaptability, for its spin.

I don't mean to sound prescriptive: it's not a moral thing, it's an aesthetic thing.

Well, in the case of me, with regard to Caribbean songs, it would actually be slightly a moral thing: I'm a middle-class white English person, who is generationally close to things like the Black & White Minstrel show. My great-grandparents were contributing to and perpetuating the hardships bemoaned in a lot of those songs. Irrespective of what anybody else thought, I'd feel I was doing something a bit crass.

That's the key though, I think, it's simply what you yourself feel comfortable doing. I sing a couple of songs from that part of the world. "Lionheart" (which is in the 'Mango Time' book), "Rum & Coca Cola" and "Iron Bar".