In which a contrast between the way folk music is seen in England and the US leads to speculation about the role of Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music in weirding the US folk scene. When is folk music otherworldy and weird and when it is, what is the weirdness due to?



MUSIC
Sharron Kraus, ‘Barleycorn’
Jane Griffiths & Colin Fletcher, ‘Air’
Alasdair Roberts, ‘I Went Hunting’ (clip)
The Iditarod, ‘Raga (in D#)’
Ian Giles, ‘The Bonny Banks of Fordie’ (clip)
Jack Rose, ‘Yaman Blues’
Ralph Stanley, ‘O Death’ (clip)
Margaret Barry, ‘She Moves Through the Fair’ (clip)
Fursaxa, ‘Poplar Moon’
Alula Down, ‘Interruption’




REFERENCES
David Keenan, ‘Welcome to the New Weird America’
Greil Marcus, Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes
Harry Smith, Anthology of American Folk Music
Jeanette Leech, Seasons They Change: The Story of Acid and Psychedelic Folk
Topic Records, The Voice of the People