What I don't think you or I could do is to knock on any door and find anything resembling the ubiquitous culture of participatory music-making that Mrs. Grover describes.

Then it's hardly ubiquitous is it? But I would argue that it is, just that Folk has selected not to acknowledge the commonality - indeed the very ubiquity - of that experience. Instead, it selects the exceptions and creates a conditional agenda whereby it can only be the experience of a select few whose life experience is somehow more authentic than others.

It still remains a fantasy, though more widespread now of course. We're working hard on our new Kipling Bellamy show for the Fylde this year - it's a repertoir which I love dearly, but which is quinessential Steamfolk on all counts. As I said in my wee note for last night's rendering of A Tree Song on Soundcloud, I've often heard the song sung as a Traditional Song by very earnest pagans. If that isn't fantasy, then what is? But that isn't to devalue its meaning, subjective or otherwise, just appreciate that, like everything from The Wicker Man to Freeborn Man of the Travelling People (which may be questioned on any amount of counts) it still carries and signifies very real potency. God, I recall when we saw Robin Williamson singing Free Born Man at Glastonbury after the Battle of the Beanfield and people were sobbing; I know I was...

One time in one of Joe & Maureen's Fylde singarounds someone sang an impassioned rendering of Shoals of Herring that actually made me feel sea-sick; and recently in Newcastle I listened as a passerby of a certain age asked a young guitarist to accompany him on All Right Now and then proceeded to sing what might well have been the definitive version. The weight of meaning and human experience hung heavy in every word irrespective of the song; it was common lore, and the crowd that gathered to watch went mental when he'd finished. Such expieriences aren't uncommon, nor yet are they Folk Music, but they are unbiquitous. If they weren't, I doubt I'd bother to be honest.