well put Will!

so many people knock the debate about 'what is folk music'? but really how can you measure how much an artist has integrated into a nation's culture?

Is it someone like me whose song Rummenigge found its way in bawdy version onto the football terraces of Germany. Alan Moorhouse whose songs, reflect his several decades spent in Germany. Wizz Jones, whose song When I leave Berlin was sung by Bruce Springsteen at the fall of the Berlin wall.

and what of Jake THackeray who took a French song form and created a more English than English song form.

Germany has been infatuated with Irish music, rather in the same way Irish people love American country and western since time imemorial
- so many Irish musicians live and work there.
some people on this forum would not even allow any of the above to be folk music.


to them - people who can rattle of jigs and reels and laments with fellow celts from Dublin, Brittany and Catalonia are the truest measure of integration.

the thing is . we're closer to Paris and Berlin than SAnFRancisco is to New York - so of course. we get on. we're musicians - not politicians.

those are the buggers who cause all the trouble. we will continue to integrate whatever nonsense the politicians are kicking up.