[Glice]

I think Dylan is definitely rooted in an American folk tradition; my beef is that the tradition he's rooted in has come to represent all of American folk traditions. Which is hardly his fault, but it's also not something you could level at, say, Pete Seeger. It's a tricky one to define, but I tend to think that folk music shouldn't be about individuals but about songs, folk narratives and storytelling. In that sense I'd probably say that a lot of hardcore is closer to a folk tradition, given that there's minimal difference between someone like Black Flag and more modern hardcore; the main difference, I suppose, is that hardcore is now pretty much a global tradition, or at least an Anglo-American one. Plus, there's no standards in hardcore; just a million variations on the same three chords.

I tend to think American folk music is an oddity in the global scheme; America is a land without the idea of a huge, sprawling mythical history; you have songs that are similar to something like Scotland the Brave, in that they evoke the 'founding fathers' and so on, but the history detailed in American folk music is a history that exists within the recorded (as in written) era; there's minimal written history that details, say, Alba and the Picts, and someone like Bede can be happily ignored for the purposes of a song about MacAlpin.

I didn't want to particularly have a pop at yourself - it's always shorthand we use in these threads - I just wanted to expunge that particular beef of mine. As is my wont.