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During the sixties and seventies most folk groups had guitars, banjos, fiddles, tin whistles, concertinas and, in certain cases double basses and uilleann pipes.

I suppose this was because The Folk, as they were then known (i.e. traditional musicians and singers) had made do with whatever cheap and playable instruments they could lay their hands on. In rural Ireland, for example, the concertina was often played by women because the instruments were fairly cheap and could be bought with the few punts the housewife managed to put aside from things like selling eggs.

There's a great CD called 'The Lark In The Clear Air' which features Irish traditional music on small instruments:Ìý Jews harp, tin whistle, piccolo and mouth organ. The result is an album of great music played on simple cheap instruments - still one of my favourite trad albums. So that was it then - banjo, fiddle, mouth organ, concertina and guitar (oh and the occasional mandolin) - that was it, pretty much.

And then along came , , and and all bets were off - brass sections, woodwind, Fender Telecasters, synths - whatever. Just as somebody once remarked that if Beethoven had had a Telecaster he'd have written an concerto for it, if The Folk had had Moogs and tenor saxes in the 17th century - they'd have played them.Ìý