Folk music is hip again

Often dismissed as parochial, this music is celebrated at festivals, awards ceremonies and on TV. But where does it come from, asks Rob Young"The unconscious music of the folk has all the marks of fine art: that it is wholly free from the taint of manufacture, the canker of artificiality; that it is transparently pure and truthful, simple and direct in its utterance." So wrote Cecil Sharp in English Folk-Song: Some Conclusions, published in 1907. This powerful, often passionate tract was the f...

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