Attempting to analise and compare songs is all too often misinterpreted as criicism Dave - it never should be
I don't like modern pop music for specific reasons, but that has everything to do with my expectations and tastes which I have no right to impose on others
For me, what Steeleye (are they really still in the land of the living) did with folk song goes against folk-song form and becomes something else
Our oral traditions are narrative - word-based - if you miss a couple of words you (literally) lose the plot - lose the plot and you lose the reason why the song was made in he first place - to convey ideas, aspirations, emotions.... etc
There are far too many words in a folk song to treat then as groups like Steeleye do
That doesn't mean to say what they do has no relevance - you can like the sound they make if you're willing to settle for that (I'm not, but that's me)
We have a recording of a radio programme on ballads by Maddy Prior; probably the worst programme ever made on the subject
She starts off fine - playing narrative performances which you can follow
Then she moves on to group performances without analytical or critical comment
Finally she ends up in a long conversation with a psychoanalysis who was probably superb at her job but didn't have a clue about folk or ballads or the societies that made them
Her interviewee then attempted to apply modern psychoanalysis to the make up of the ballads - an utter waste o valuable air time during a week that was dedicated to celebrating music - a dreadful wasted opportunity that might have helped put folk song on the map
For me the enjoyment of singing folk songs is in finding and interpreting the stories of the songs and applying them to my own life and experiences
When you do that with a song it becomes part of you and is yours forever
Now I've reached the age I have, you can't imaging how enjoyable and important that is
My greatest problem nowadays when singing is to maintain a balance between the performance and the emotion
Traveller, Mary Delaney had the same problem - she described some of her songs "too heavy"; she occasionally broke down in the middle of them because the allowed the emotion to dominate the performance (Buried in Kilkenny, which is on line, is one she regularly lost in this way
Enjoyment is essential when singing, but for me, that enjoyment increases if you can re-live your songs rather than just repeat them
Jim