Marj,
Don't feel obliged to respond to this - but I've started, so I'll finish!
Nothing personal, but I've become a little tired of hearing the word 'narrow' - I prefer 'accurate'. The term 'traditional' when applied to song and music means something as specific as 'mushroom' when applied to soup. I have a few hundred books on my shelf on traditional song and music, all referring to a certain body of songs and tunes; these are the things that caught my interest half a lifetime ago and they continue to interest me and give me pleasure.
I also get pleasure from jazz, blues, classical music, and a host of other types of music, but I know where to find them when I want them.
This is no longer the case with folk or traditional music. There was a time when I could (and did) go to a folk club and know what I was going to hear - ballads, shanties, broadsides, you name it - a whole wide rainbow, all falling within that 'narrow' definition. Now, that is no longer the case. Over my last years aa a regular at folk clubs I was served up music hall, pop songs of an uncertain age and a whole host of undefineable types of song and music that didn't interest me in the slightest (mostly badly, or at best indifferently) performed. So I voted with my bum, took it off my seat and stopped going.
I'm sure that the absence of my bum isn't going to make the folk world rock on its axis, but there are thosands like me who also stopped going. The number of clubs reduced dramatically and audiences dwindled. I was used to attending clubs who boasted full (or at the very worst), half-full houses; the last few I attended had no more than a dozen people in the audience.
I have to be in London in a couple of weeks and whereas at one time I had the choice of dozens of clubs, there miiiiiiiiight be one worth making the effort for.
Surely it's worth trying to change that situation.
Best wishes yourself,
Jim Carroll
PS I think Nutty is a very lucky chap (or chapess) to have heard all the arguments, personally, the day I stop learning is the time I flop in the armchair and settle down to wall-to-wall 'Love Island'.