> "To be fair, they weren't new in the sixties either. The songs you cite
> were all written in the 40s, the 30s and the 19th century."
>
> The republican struggle in Ireland produced some good songs later than
> that, like 'the men behind the wire'
Well we had a couple written later here too -- most notably Pete Seegar's "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" which is excellent. But again, these are exceptions that prove the rule. They were both written at the end of the 1960s by folk song writers at the tail end of the folk song movement. And at least in America, they were outnumbered by folk songs recycled from the Popular Front 30s. The 60s didn't invent the idea that folk songs made good protest songs and were good for rousing a crowd; they simply copied it from the commies. And we're still copying it today because we haven't come up with something better. Crowds are only capable of keeping in sync for pretty simple tunes, and they have to be tunes where the voices are more important than the instruments. So it's no mystery that hymns, folk songs and anthems are mainly what crowds sing -- esp. if they're crowds of newcomers.
Our problem is we mostly don't like those forms and rarely listen to them when we're not in a crowd. But I'm not sure I see what's the problem with recycling. Why should anti-war sentiment be expressed mainly in songs? We've produced tons of anti-war movies much sooner than they ever had in Vietnam. Isn't that a more sensible form for expressing that sentiment?
Michael