Well toadfrog, I definitely think you've got it wrong about folk music in France, and not just in Brittany, where my understand is it's about as alive and kicking as it is in Ireland.

And I know there are brilliant musicians making music in various parts of France, because they keep on turning up at festivals in England. They may be an isolated and ignored minority at home, for all I know, but then aren't we all?

I was hoping Wolfgang would get into this. You know what I'm reminded of, what seems to be the situation in America where it appears the same music can be defined as being either country or folk not so much on the basis of how it sounds, but on the basis of political ideology.

Maybe it'd be a good idea to drop the word "volk" in relation to traditional music in Germany, and leave it to the far right to desecrate. And start collecting from old people while they are still around, and build around the concept of traditional, and contemporary homemade music, maybe with the German word for "roots" which people keep on trying to popularise in England, because "folk" puts a lot of people off.

I'd imagine that mixing up contemporary versions of traditional German songs with music collected from the guest-worker communities would be a good clear way of indicating that this wasn't a hyper-nationalist thing. And a bit of that other German (among other things) tradition, Klezmer music.