I have to say, I wasn't expecting such an amazing response! Thank you all for all these suggestions, I'm going to follow up on all of them. I'm emailed to register an account so that I can send and receive messages.

My apologies, I should have said, I'm at the history department at Trinity College Dublin. I have a bio
here , though on my project it's a little out of date.

To clarify a little on the "politics" angle, you're right that some of the figures wouldn't have considered themselves political. I suppose in some ways I'm trying to talk about a wide politics beyond very straightforward parties or activism (though of course I'm talking about them too!), to the ways that folk music served as a vector for international social and political trends. If that doesn't make much sense, don't worry, I've been trying to figure it out for two years now!