Thanks Will - should have said that
I do wish people would stop using spitefully childish terms like 'folk police' or we'll be back to schoolyard name-calling before you can say "snigger-snogwriter" - itis an ugly term and it gets us nowhere.
The music is more complex than that.
I came into folk song because I liked it to sing and to listen to - when I realsised just how important it was I hung round - I've been there since.
"Folk" isn't a term you can walk away from - it's too well documented and has been for nearly 150 years - it identifies what the music is, who it served and how it came about - it has history.
Why should re-brand our song and music when it's already well-branded - what do we say when someone new to the genre asks about "folk song" - "Go look in 'Folk Song in England' or 'Folk Songs of The North East' or 'Folk Songs of the Upper Thames' or 'The Ballad and the Folk' or Cecil Sharp's 'Folk Songs of the Appalachians' or his and Maud Karpeles 'Folk Songs of England Collection'..... but don't take any notice of the title!!
It gets more complicated when you have to tie it up with its related disciplines; folklore, folk music, folk dance, folk tale, folk custom, folk beliefs, folk art...
Making a folk U.D.I. is all very well but sorry, this chair is occupied and the 'anything goes clubs' don't change that fact one iota.
It wasn't your Folk Police (nastily insulting term) who drove us out of the clubs in droves, most folk clubs I went to were fairly easy-going within the description, it was the fact that when we turned up we didn't get to hear anything resembling what we came for - if we wanted to hear Bonzo Dog Doodah Band (or Ziggy Stardust) numbers, we'd dig out the records from the masters of that genre - we didn't have to listen to fifth-rate renditions belted out by folkies no longer singing folksongs.
There was a time when the folk revival knew what folk song was and we were able to choose our clubs on the basis of whether they were well-performed or not.
Enjoy your Ziggy Stardust - "I'm sorry for your trouble" as they say around here when someone dies.
When you work with old singers, especially those who have been part of communities who have had a thriving living tradition, you realise that they have, to some extent, taken ownership of the songs - they are Clare songs, or Norfolk songs, or Traveller songs... wherever they turn up, they belong to there.
The singers may have sung music hall, or C&W, or pop songs of the period, but the Traditional songs are (or more accurately were) different - I believe the communities that once had the songs no longer make or remake them to any degree - the 'living traditions' are things of the past - we saw that happen virtually overnight between 1973/75 with Irish Travellers when they all got portable televisions and stopped singing and making songs.
As folkies, we still get pleasure in singing them, and hopefully, using the forms to make new ones, but I believe by doing so, we take on the responsibility of maintaining their importance - they really are part of our social history - the product of communities who, it has been claimed, were incapable of producing anything artistically or socially worthwhile - as the album series says 'The Voice of the People' - "The Folk" in fact.
We've been working here on the West Coast of Ireland since the early seventies.
Three years ago, when we started to prepare our collection for the internet, we stumbled on something we had overlooked - several dozen local songs which were not part of the mainstream tradition and had not moved out of the area - four songs about a local shipwreck, five about an incident during the 'Black and Tans' period and several more on the same theme, four song on the local West Clare Railway, election songs, songs about local characters, murders and drinking sprees..... all made during the lifetimes of the singers and all anonymous.
An old singer told us a couple of years ago that "if a man farted in church, somebody made a song about it".
I have since come to the conclusion that the practice of recording local history in song must have happened throughout the country and, because of the songs not tying up with the traditional repertoire, they have been either not recorded or ignored when they have - just as we did.
This maybe common knowledge elsewhere - it's new to me and worth pushing to see if we can get others to follow it up.
Jim Carroll