The Guardian newspaper ran a blog on Saturday, that, without paraphrasing, Folk Music, once thought of as parochial, is now cool. Thats as may be, but who gets to decide, and aside from that, I don't think its stretching anything too much to say that folk music has been "cool" in Scotland for a long time at least for a significant minority of people. Maybe something gets to be classified as hip when it starts to enter the consciousness of a more mainstream audience, but then by definition it has stopped being hip or cool long before that point as for anything to get anywhere near that level it has to be adopted by "the man" first, man!
Heres the real truth from my point of view, anyway. Folk music in Scotland has never been hip or cool, but by the same hand has never not been hip or cool...I don't think Ive ever been to party where someone hasnt sung a song that would be associated with folk music for instance the ubiquitous Wild Mountain Thyme or Caledonia, or maybe a less welll known regional song, which would suggest that folk music has always had a mainstream adoption, which of course it has although, there has been a stigma in the past with confessing to a liking of folk music or being a folk musician. This seems to be gone for the time being, but I think what the Guardian blog refered to, wouldnt directly be folk music itself, but the songer -songwriters working within the folk umberalla, including the excellent Alasdair Roberts.
So is folk the new Americana and Americana the new britpop which was the new grunge which was the new indie rock etc etc etc etc, that its officially OK to enjoy. Who cares?
