Taking your points in order GUEST,

1. No it doesn't. Folk music didn't alienate the wider public. That was done by a music industry which seized on a few easily stereotyped aspects of a small part of the scene, and used its muscle in the media to propagate anti folk propaganda, for purely commercial reasons.

The general public tends to believe the media, and the folk community cannot buck their stranglehold on radio and TV to refute this nonsense. I have been involved in folk music since the beginning of the 1960s, and I have found only a handful of strictly traditional venues in all that time.

2. Comments on recent threads about joining in at sessions had nothing whatever to do with folk music per se, but were expressing the need for common courtesy and good manners which would apply equally at a Jazz, a rock session.

The kind of courtesy and good manners which now seem to be sadly lacking almost everywhere except in folk clubs.

The problem with English folk music is that there is no longer any positive reference to it in the media, and several generations have no idea what goes on in a 21st century folk club.

When we have young people come for the first time to my own club, they are invariably impressed and surprised by the range of music, and most of them do come back. That hardly fits the description of us driving people away.

Perhaps you might like to visit a few clubs, to gain a little insight.

Don T.