Sheez, what a great thread. Enlightening.

All the fractured-genre-scenes in the big cities, all the 'no-folk-wanted' attitudes from the mainstream...yet in SMALL towns, if you're lucky and the scene isn't completely nonexistent, you still have people patient with 'different' kinds of music. Still a familial attitude of being willing to hear from the young student or the old geezer or the wannabe popster, or whatever's locally available.

Maybe the cities were, and are, what is strangling real participatory folk music. Maybe they can mount a great three-ring-circus festival and people will come out for the sampler aspect of it, but there's little no audience or patience for a single plucker for a whole evening, because there is no real Community of folks willing to go hear or play or sing with their neighbors.

Meanwhile, MOST small towns, at least in the South, have turned into podlands full of shut garage doors and satellite antennas, punctuated by football games. If you're very lucky, there'll be some youngsters learning bluegrass fiddle so they can go compete, and a gospel quartet at church.

People, if you have a folk 'scene' of any kind, be glad and support it, because it is getting rare, and succeeding despite these headwinds.

A side note: when I was growing in the sixties-seventies, several places to hear good folk were booming. They were in nightclubs and bars completely closed to teenagers. Then you were surprised when the next generation didn't pick up the ball and keep running with it? The festivals and workshops we have today are bringing in new players if not audiences, because they are accessible to families.

Another side note:
I thought it was amazing how "Jayto" kept reporting in with new happ'nin trends and bands, all excited, and the seniors ignored him to go on with 'why things are so bad' explanations.   Maybe what we have here is a failure to communicate?