The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #152458   Message #3566717
Posted By: GUEST,Spleen Cringe
14-Oct-13 - 05:25 AM
Thread Name: BBC Radio 6 Music & Folk Radio UK
Subject: RE: BBC Radio 6 Music & Folk Radio UK
C'mon! Six Music is not a station aimed at a demographic of older men who like revivalist folk from the 60s and 70s. Some of the DJs play a bit of it (notably Gideon Coe, Jarvis Cocker and Stuart Maconie, where you might hear Shirley Collins between The Moon Duo and some vintage Italian library music) as one element of much broader programming rather than segregated in its own little specialist niche. Personally, I'd rather see folk music integrated into mainstream programming than cordoned off. All the nonsense above about 'frightening the achingly hip demographic' just sounds like tHe sour grapes one might expect from someone who feels inexplicably threatened by other peoples' musical taste - surely not the case? I don't particularly like some of the singer songwriter stuff that they featured (though River Man by Nick Drake was arguably by far the best thing played on the show), not because I have a problem with calling it folk music, but because on a personal level I find it a bit boring - though no more boring than a lot of the stuff churned out by the current swathe of traddies. It however does conform to what most people - the public, radio programmers, music writers, record companies and so on(in fact everyone except folkies!) - think of as folk music. And I imagine more people listened to it (and therefore got to hear Fairport Convention doing Matty Groves) than if it had been wall-to-wall trad, which was never going to happen on Six Music anyway.