Indeed.

Perhaps Catherine is not aware how our indigenous music became 'alternative' or at least a minority or 'acquired' taste in the first place.

This did not happen because of any intrinsic lack of quality in the songs or tunes (though there are some real dogs for sure). Rather, public taste has been developed by education and the entertainment industry in two directions - both of which have taken us away from the older styles of playing and singing.

One of those is of course the whole classical 'eye-to-hand-avoiding-the-ear' disaster, which has been blunting children's musical development for far too long, and distancing us all from the aural systems we were born with.

The other is the whole mid Atlantic popular music phenomenon, which does of course overlay with folk at one end of the spectrum, but at the other we have to deal with 100 years of Ear Wax poured from loudspeakers various, which is kind of hard to hear though.

I've had members of my own family decline to come to my gigs because, they explained, they were classical musicians, and they knew they wouldn't like it. And they probably wouldn't - I don't sing 100% in tune and my voice is kind of scratchy and they've been brought up to notice and mind about things like that. No problem.

And I've got loads of chums from the rock world who love scratchy out of tune vocals, but won't come because they think they won't like the songs. Until some of them did - and couldn't talk about anything else for days!

I understand where Catherine's coming from. There's a huge gap between the two mainstream popular cultures and our musical heritage and we need to do something about that, but you can't bridge the gap by forcing folk in either of the other two directions.

Classical and pop both grew out of folk, so the only way to lead people back to that root is by getting them to notice the flowers and the fruits, and then lead them gently back down the branches and the truck to the best place to sit and listen to music...

With your back against the tree.