I've had a fair amount of musical training and I could do elaborate, multi-instrumental arrangements of traditional material if I so desired. But I don't. I do like to get together with friends and jam, but when it comes to my performances, most of the time I stick to one voice, one guitar. I'm not saying that other people shouldn't pull out all the stops if they're so inclined, but these are my thoughts on the matter:—

Ballads are story-songs. Non-ballad folk songs usually imply a story. To me, telling the story is the important thing. Let's put it this way: suppose you have an exquisite little drawing. You love the drawing so much that you feel it deserves something special, so you put it into a large, ornate, gilded frame. Then people come along, look at it, and say, "My, isn't that a lovely frame!" See what I mean?

On another thread, Your Musical Influences, I posted some remarks about one of the most creative and intelligent singers of folk songs I have ever met: Rolf Cahn, well-known in Berkeley, California and Cambridge, Massachusetts in the Fifties and Sixties.

. . . on the question of presenting folk songs "authentically" versus exercising one's own creativity, he once said: "One the one hand, there is the danger of becoming a musical stamp collector; on the other, the equal danger of leaving behind the language, texture, and rhythm that made the music worthy of our devotion in the first place. So we . . . try to determine those elements which make a particular piece of music meaningful to us, and to build the performance through these elements."

To me, that's always been a good guiding principle.

Don Firth