I about shit when I saw there were five pages for a thread called folk music. I thought I was alone. A thread on Harry Smith's Archive of American Folk music sunk like a rock, for some reason (essential listening, by the way).
Then I started reading. You're talking about English folk. That's different.
For some reason, I have trouble getting into English folk. To these American ears, Fairport Convention, for example, is just weird.
Can anyone else hear the difference? It's difficult to put into words, but English folk seems more complex, to a certain extent. Yeah yeah, I know Americans borrowed a bunch from the English (Barbra Allen is as much a staple here as it is there, for example), but it gets changed when that happens. Becomes simpler?
By the way, someone clue me in on "anti-folk." Thanx.
|