G'day Dick,

I don't know how much the attitude of the BBC has changed over the decades since Ewan MacColl did the Radio Ballads. I remember a story he told, during a master class he ran in Sydney.

When he was researching for the radio programmes on folk music, he found that the Beeb has immense tape archives of folksongs, gathered by professional recordists and now firmly filed away "For Study Purposes". Since he had official access to look for useful material for his programmes, he taped recorded copies of all the good stuff and loaned them out to friends - who were encouraged to take copies.

By using the newly available home tape-recording equipment, he was able to "liberate" these folk archives and return them to the people. One hopes that the BBC has not reverted to the attitude shared by all too many 'academic' researchers ... hiding folk material away so that nobody else can make a profit from it ... or beat them to publish some 'gem'.

All this reminds us of what a treasure we have in a forum such as Mudcat Café ... free from accountants, bureaucrats and censors ... long may it remain so!

Regards,

Bob Bolton