well i went to the singer club as a callow teen fresh off the turnip truck. i've told the story elsewhere. it was an experience, but one i didn't understand at all untill years later. i sang a ditty in nova scotia galic--the gaelic i heard when very young. i sang along with a guy doing it in english. when he hit the chorus i switched to gaelic as that's how it was sung where i grew up.

they all must have assumed i was american because the balefull stares were intense, and the guy i tried to sing along with(along with everybody else) had a english accent. i think he was an englishman pretending to be scottish--and he may have been maccoll!! all i know was it waqsn't much like a kitchen party at home and i hit the road soon after.

if this doesn't highlight the wierdness thast urban over educated and under cultured folkies get into i don't know what does.

one of the few people they ever heard who was singing a childhood song in his childhood language was given the bum's rush. at that age i didn't care. i was much more interested in busking, drinking and chasing girls,

years late a remember the same shit in vancouver. a politically correct vancouver folk song society(the vancouver folk ss--bourgeois folkies never seem to have any self awareness)--told me the sing canadian songs here when i wanted to sing a gaelic song--and struck me off the list of singers

there are real roots issues that are not addressed by a facile quote from martin carty that folk has never been pure. what folk has rarely been is rescpectfull of the imperialized cultures.

moreover the scions of the middle class need to lighten up and hold off a lot. at the time i went to the singers i had worked on a fish boat and at a carpet factory--didn't get educated untill a decade later. i had no idea the twisted application of their ideas. my experience was that in the uk and canada the working class get pushed asside by bourgeois singers who usually claim to represent the working class(are you listening jon bartlett and rika ruebsaat?)

at least in the united states they love to new songs from rootsy traditions without much question

now on many political issues i agree with maccoll and he was a great song writer . i thought he was part of the lallans movement. but maybe not