Hello everybody … here we go again!

Kevin … I agree that moaning about how dismal things are nowadays is a venerable folk custom which should not be allowed to expire.   Could one of the big festivals find a corporate sponsor willing to fund a prize for the best (or worst?) whinging song in traditional style? And if they did, would you enter?

Fay … our views are not as far apart as you think. In my last posting, I agreed entirely with you that debate and discussion are excellent things in themselves, but suggested that the amount of time and energy we folkies spend arguing with each other – often about relatively minor matters - might be a bit excessive.

When it comes to the major issues, I'm with Mike Yates, who wrote recently:

"Does all this nit-picking really matter? Well, yes it does. Because if our foundations are based on false assumptions, then the whole subsequent body of folksong and folklore studies is liable to come tumbling down around us."

(See "Jumping to Conclusions" , an article on the Musical Traditions website - http://www.mustrad.org.uk/enthuse.htm ).

As the for age thing – to me that seems relatively trivial. Out in the so-called "real world" of commerce, there is a clique of marketing executives and style journalists who find it convenient to keep their customers stacked in tidy demographic packages. So they keep telling us: "Nobody under thirty would be seen dead wearing those shoes … anybody over fourteen who likes that record needs to see a counsellor urgently … only an old-age pensioner would want to drive this car … etc, etc."   But we don't have to believe them.

Folk music still manages (just) to survive outside the overheated atmosphere of consumerist propaganda.   On the whole, people don't take it up because somebody told them that it's what everybody in their age-group must buy into if they want to escape total social exclusion. And once committed to folk, they tend to stay with it, rather than dumping it as soon as the media oracles decide that it's passed its sell-by date. Which is why some of us are still here (and still arguing with each other) forty years after we first encountered the joys of folk music.


Wassail!