Garg,

I generally work with WHAT IS rather than what the ideal would be. (If that makes me a politician, so be it.) All is often not as I'd prefer it -- same as you. I'd prefer more music threads that I could add to if what they want happens to be what I've got to give back. But if that ain't happening, and there is a topic opened in another thread---rather than CREEPING away from their topic, I, for once, chose to create a separate thread that had a question that had occurred to me as a tangent to the other.
Sir, if you will look at my last post in this very thread, it shows graphically, how I sought to bring music to this discussion with my educational shows in learning situations as well as within this best of all possible Mudcat situations--given the real-world parameters involved.

On that same tack, I have NEVER EVER seen a folkie adaptation for any of the "songs" of J.R.R. Tolkien that spoke to me. Michael Flanders and Donald Swan did an entire LP on Angel Records of Swan's tunes for those lyrics. It didn't make it for me at all, but it may have succeeded admirably where our British friends are concerned. I do wonder what they might've felt about the efforts of Flanders and Swann as regards those lyrics?!?!

I do suspect, Mr. Gargoyle, that it comes down to, "IF YA CAN'T BEAT 'EM, JOIN 'EM." This ain't brain surgery. It's folk music, for Coyote's sake. And goin' with the proverbial flow is much better for my, and maybe your, blood pressure. ;-)

Art Thieme