And that`s what you need in folk music. These are songs that have been aroudn for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. They existed for centuries before any kind of recording was possible, even before people could write, for god`s sake! So the only wah those songs lived and got passed on was by singers. The better singer you were, the more likely it was people were going to turn out to hear you and remember you — and remember the song — whether it was at a pub or wedding or ceilidh or just a knot of people seeking shelter under a tree during a storm.
It`s a kind of a time machine, really, the way you can trace a song from whoever`s singing it now back through the years — Dylan or Johnny Cash, Joanna Newsom or Vashti Bunyan — on through all those nameless folk who kept it alive a thousand years ago. People talk about carrying the torch, but I always think of that man they found in the ice up in the Alps. He`s been under the snow for 1,200 years, and when they discovered him, he was still wearing his clothes, a cloak of woven grass and a bearskin cap, and in his pocket they found a little bag of grass and tinder and a bit of dead coal. That was the live spark he`d been carrying, the bright ember he kept in his pocket to start a fire whenever he stopped.
You`d have to be so careful, more careful than we can even imagine, to keep that one spark alive. Because that`s what kept you alive, in the cold and the dark.
Folk music is like that. And by folk I mean whatever music it is that you love, whatever music it is that sustains you. It`s the spark that keeps us alive in the cold and night, the fire we all gather in front of so we`re not alone in the dark.