I've heard this one before: 'The middle classes have killed traditional music with their snobbery and intellectualism (cause you don't get snobs or intellectuals in the proletariat, do you?). To some extent, I'll even go along with it, especially with regards to the folk scene and the 'Arts' circuit.

But I wonder how many of the people here have ever heard of Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann? Not a perfect organisation, but one that has been promoting Irish traditional music amongst largely working-class kids (and their kids) in Britain for over 50 years. A lot of people don't like it as it is characterised by what many might describe as the 'faults' within the Irish community (which usually boil down to Irish people not all being socialist, literary, philosophical, poetic, agnostic sociology graduates) but it does its job of locating Irish music within the Irish community and by and large does it rather well. Plus it does it all year round, which is more than a lot of so-called 'Arts Festivals' do. Which is probably why the Arts mafia chooses to ignore it (if they are aware of it at all).

A good friend of mine (as well as a very fine accordion player) once said to me that traditional music is played by two types of people: those who love it and those who do it for the attention. I wonder which category the people who get most aggravated by this subject fall into.