"we have a responsibility to find and preserve the music, song"
And there seems to lie the difference
How about actually enjoying singing and listening to it.
That's what brought me to it and that's what's kept me at it.
I stopped singing for quite a long time - if you are intensely involved in something like collecting and have a full time job you have to make a choice which one you are going to make a priority - collecting won hands down
I had a repertoire of over 300 songs that, for a long time, only existed as a list in a notebook
About six years ago the opportunity opened up here to sing again and I was stunned at how the songs had survived in my memory and, when I started resurrecting them, how they were actually more enjoyable than they ever were before
The work we did with MacColl enabled me to tackle some of the 'age' problems, loss of range, breathlessness... but I find now that, with a few run-throughs I can remember all the songs in the book to sing publicly, the only problem being that now I find difficulty in controlling the emotions contained in the songs - I have to work hard at maintaining the balance between technique and emotianal interpretation - I found out last week that a fine singer I put up as an example on the other thread has the same problem
I enjoy research, I enjoyed collecting, but singing is an opportunity to tell others how I feel about certain things - that's what the folk songs were made for and that's what they did for me.
These songs are not there to be preserved, they are there to be sung, and I argue as I do in the hope that others get the same opportunity that I had to wade in a fantastic river of songs - and I want to be there to hear them do it
It's beginning to happen in Ireland with youngsters finding the songs as we did - it's not going to happen in England unless somebody gets their finger out
Jim