Brian,

Clearly we don't see things the same way (which is fine), and we certainly don't see IA in the same light.

I see him as an exploitative, opportunistic empire builder, not as being incredibly dedicated. I believe his motivation has more to do with an egomaniacal need for power and prestige, than with a love of and a dedication to folk and traditional music. But that is my opinion, and I would not attempt to persuade others to share it. People are entitled to decide for themselves what they think about the person writing the editorial.

That said, my concern is with the editorial itself. I don't think a young musician reading it would read between the lines, as it seems to me you are suggesting we do, in order to understand what IA meant by it. Young musicians and music fans without the long personal history you and some others in the UK have with IA, likely won't read into to Ian's words the message that you have. In my mind, there is a generational perspective that I think you might be missing here.

I have just gone back and read it again. I still see it as a direct attack on young musicians, on the younger generation itself, because those are the words as they stand on the page (or screen in this case!). Ian often back peddles to exonerate himself once enough of the "right" people admonish him for his mistakes. He engages in these sorts of abusive attacks on a specific group of people (like the Americans in uk.music.folk, for instance) when he thinks he can get away with it. He has always seemed to me to be a bigot, not a man who is just expressing his views and visions for folk music.

Ian has long been a proponent of the nationalist folk worldview. Not all lovers of folk and traditional music come to the music from that perspective, particularly Americans. I realize many in the UK folk scene view music through the nationalist lens of English, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish roots (and will argue incessantly over which nation's music a particular song or tune "belongs" to). It seems to me that when they do, regardless of their nationality, that they have certain intolerances and prejudices which come along with that ideology. Because Ian dresses it up in words like "innovation" and claims to be multi-ethnic, doesn't change the fact that he believes he should be able to make over the folk world in the imperial image he holds for it. Considering the history between the British empire and many of the cultures Ian exploits in the name of "world" music and "innovation" some of us see his "dedication" no differently than we now view the British anthropologists, folklorists, and antiquarians of old. As exploiters of other cultures, not saviors.

Which is, I suppose, why Ian remains so popular in the UK, and so irrelevant in the US.