A few thoughts for Weelittledrummer (and possibly some others hereabouts).

Folks – I think you may be confusing two different things here – namely, a club and a venue.

A venue is an enclosed space, where paying customers are offered entertainment (in this case, musical).   A club is a community of people who gather together occasionally because they share a particular interest (in this case, a musical one). Many musical clubs hire a venue to meet in, but by no means all venues are clubs.

Professional musicians (and those who aspire to become such) need to persuade the managers of venues that they can attract audiences big enough to turn a reasonable profit.   Alternatively, they are free to hire a venue for an evening, and take the profit, or the loss, themselves. Unfortunately, the supply of affordable venues remains limited, while the number of aspiring performers keeps on increasing.

An alternative strategy is to join an existing musical club, present your material to its members, and hope they like it. If this succeeds, well and good. But if a majority of that club's members remain devoted to their kind of music, and lukewarm towards yours, that is their democratic right.   You need to look for a more sympathetic club, or start a new one yourself. Retreating into paranoia may be an emotionally satisfying response, but it is not a good career move.

The conspiracy theorists do have a point, however, when they move into the territory of the state-subsidised arts. By which I mean everything from the BBC and the Royal Opera House to Little Piddlington-on-the-Wold Arts Centre, or Grosschester University Students' Union.) In such institutions, individuals can exploit their position to promote artists (or whole genres of music) for which there is relatively little demand, while ignoring others which are more popular with the general public. But there are ways of changing this. They range from writing letters to the management (or the media, or your elected representative), to simply taking your custom elsewhere.

I don't think all this has a lot to do with the various labels that people choose to stick on different kinds of music. Complaints about limited access to venues, and insufficient attention from the media are commonplace in other areas beyond the little world of folk and traditional music.

But if some musicians or listeners wish to convert what should be a pleasurable experience into a form of tribal warfare, they can include me out. Life is too short for this kind of nonsense - get on with playing, singing and listening whatever type of music you enjoy, and leave your neighbours to do likewise.

Wassail!