Martin Carthy on "rustic sepia" fol songs

"I regard tradition as progressive," he says, "and a traditional song as a progressive force, because it is concerned with the continuity of things." The word "radical" is derived from "radix", a root, and this is Carthy's radicalism: "You come from somewhere, for Christ's sake – it's like holding a grandchild in your arms – and let me tell you, there is nothing in parenthood to prepare you for the feeling of grandparenthood. Good folk music is like me holding my grandchildren and wanting to know more about my great, great, great uncle – I've got a picture of him – Tom Carthy from Ballybunion, County Kerry. I see his fingers on the uilleann pipes, and I see my father's hands and my grandfather's hands. The continuity of folk music is similar, because it is also our continuity."
Carthy illustrates his point with the exactitude of the cultural genealogist he is: "There's a great storyteller called Hugh Lupton, who cited the words of a man called Duncan Williamson, who said that when he told a story, he felt behind him a long line of all the people who had told that story before. What we are doing singing folk songs is full of ghosts, and that is what is exciting".The term "nostalgia" is pointless in a conversation with Martin Carthy; the past is a propulsion, a well of riches, and folk songs are the history of its common people, the expressions of their struggles, tribulations and superstitions, their guile, humour, love, lust and violence – and their "subversion", often in its subtlest form."
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I don't by any means, like everything Martin does with folk song, but his love for what some people here despise and denigrate and a lot believe is outdated and irrelevant is both profound and deeply moving
Mind you Dave "that's only his opinion"
Jim