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Edinburgh's local tabloid rag 'The Evening News' has never been renowned for a high standard in journalistic integrity, and their leading story of Tuesday 3rd November proved no exception to the rule. Splashed across the front cover was a glibly self righteous attack on plans to introduce bilingual Gaelic signs to Scotland's capital city. The paper, (known locally as the "Evening Snooze") argued that "the language is spoken by a mere 56,000 of the population" and is "one of the SNP's pet projects", and makes no attempt to disguise its combined ignorance and contempt for our native tongue - stating rhetorically "...who will benefit from this in Edinburgh? Certainly not the locals, and certainly not the bulk of visitors to the city."
I don't speak Gaelic, I can recite one phrase (only because phonetically it sounds like "bacon, crack, colliery") but I'm not sure exactly what it means - and for obvious (and perhaps rather childish) reasons I will always remember the title of the BBC Gaelic TV show 'Cuntas'. It is true to say though, that for a non Gaelic speaking lowlander, I have been exposed more than most to the mysterious world of the Gael. There is no question that the Gaelic world can tend towards a slightly insular mentality, but this should come as no surprise when you consider how many people (out-with the highlands) actually speak the language.
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The other week I found myself in a conversation with someone who was studying for a PHD in Ethnomusicology (if I remember correctly), focusing specifically on Scots song. The interesting thing was, that she was clearly so used to being the subject of intense derision for this - no stranger to the phrase "mickey mouse course", it took her a good 10 minutes or so to establish that I was not quietly chuckling to myself over the uselessness of such studies (at least I think I established that). The really sad thing that I gleaned from this conversation was the extent of collective disdain with which our society perceives the study of it's own cultural history, and it got me to thinking about our attitudes towards traditional music and folk song within education.
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I discovered something rather disconcerting recently, and I fear it is symptomatic of a much larger problem within the folk scene which has gone unchecked now for far too long. Apparently iTunes (the largest music retailer in the USA, and the foremost online music retailer in the world) recently deemed the "folk" genre as surplus to requirements - not the music itself, they just felt that the labeling could be better shared out amongst other genres such as "singer/songwriter", "acoustic", "world" and "country". Shoddy as this is on the part of Apple, it is merely the tip of the iceberg with regards collective attitudes towards the term "folk", and if you're looking for the source - I'd point my finger squarely in the direction of the folk scene itself.
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