That's what folksong is - or was. Come down from the ivory tower and listen to the people who were there.

Thing is, music still has exactly that role in people's lives today but I don't see many Folkies taking much of an interest in it by dint of its context alone, much less its content or else the purity of the folk experience. Knock on any door, any where, and you'll be able to talk to someone - anyone - who'll be able to give the same sort of impassioned & moving testimony about the music of their life and times. Now, whilst that sort of experience is not uncommon, it is far from objective, but to use it as some sort of Exhibit A (as you have done here) turns it into a fantasy. Both mawkish and voyeuristic, it becomes a myth.

See my earlier post regarding my feelings about The Bob Copper book.

If not, what is your point?

That the evidence is incomplete, selective, agenda driven and motivated by means of cultural condescension, as indeed most so-called folkloric studies were back then. It's a legacy that endures today - one of the pure-blood Passive Carrier, or Tradition Bearer. After all, how can these grubby so-and-sos possibly understand the significance of their own songs, much less their modal structures, analogues, origins, processes or even the purity (or otherwise) of their traditions? It's a pure Paternalistic Colonialism visited upon the grubbier members of one's own society who have failed to appreciate their own culture by letting it go to wreck and ruin. The very necessity of the revival is evidence enough of that, much less the Moral Visions of Sharp et al that underwrote the whole thing, and continue to do so despite the very obvious fact that Popular Culture still has real and vivid meaning to The Folk and always has, and always will.

but to acknowledge that is not to disavow the entirety of folksong research,

I'm not disavowing anything, just seeing it for what it is / was. The songs are real*, the testimonies likewise, the dances, rites, riots, etc. etc. But once they are collected and revived they become something else entirely, and it's that something else which gives rise to the various idioms, conventions and orthodoxies we're dealing with in the revival to this day. Kipling was aware of this; in his more obvious Folk poetry he demonstrates a yearning for the clack of the common tongue (however so contrived) or else the structures of the old songs themselves (False Night = Danny Deever etc.); even his mawkish celebrations of conservative colonialism, such as his Ralph & Ted fantasy of The Land which only seeks to confirm the golden rule of The Rich Man in his castle and the Poor Man at his gate. That later generations (but not PB!) choose to see The Land as some sort of Socialist Pamphlet is one of the supreme ironies of the innate reactionary conservatism of Folk; that Kipling could write the supreme Humanist Hymn (A Pilgrim's Way) is not.

This might sound harsh, but I personally find it deeply appealing and worthy of my attention and passion for what it tells me about the race of which I am but one miniscule fragment, and yet we, each & every one of us, contain the entire world within us as a subjective cherished treasure.

And of course you'll be aware that Harker's academic rigour in analysing Sharp's account of his collecting in Somerset has been, shall we say, questioned.

One would hope so; it's in the nature of academia to be under constant peer-review and questioning, which is no doubt why the 1954 Definition is still quoted chapter and verse.

*

Leave then...

England is my home; much as Folk is my home. Indeed, it is my country; and in embracing it, we must not only own both the good and the bad, but also accept that one man's bad is at least going to be good to someone. My Atheism is all-consuming, and the dragon will always have more than the one tongue, and dialogue (and above all Freedom of Speech) is an inherent birthright with respect of ones own country and the culture thereof which is never to exclude the experiences of others. I despair of England as much as I love it; I despair of its governments, its councils, its developers, its art councils, its middle-class media dominance, its elites and its housing schemes. I love its multi-cultural and multi-ethnic diversity; I love the vibrancy of cities as much as I hate the blandness of what has come to pass as Countryside. I also love Kipling, but I'm aware of his racism; and the reasons for that racism (which is never to excuse it); I love the old songs and the new; the vibrancy of UK hip-hop and... and...

S O'P

PS - This is still a Fun Thread BTW...