I don't know whether they do or not, Linda (referring to your last sentence). But I know that some of the youngstersb are indeed digging metaphorically, to find old material. They are probably less interested right now in documenting the present or recent past - somehow I feel that this is more of an interest to your generation and also to mine. Not sure why - perhaps it requires a few years of living experience to want to look to your immediate roots, close up as it were; while the more distant past fascinates more readily and is less contentious or politically/emotionally loaded with links to one's own experience.

But the interest in the past, recent or distant, is being established in the minds of these youngsters, and that's what's important. The seeds might take a few years to germinate in some; in others (like Jim Causley) they take hold immediately - some of the wording in Jim's sleevenotes for "Fruit of the Earth" give this away, I think his immediate family probably had the biggest impact on him though.

I don't want to get back into a definitions discussion; but any good music/song/dance/art has to have relevance, in my book. Not necessarily relevance to today, but to something that touches us, moves us, makes us feel or think, instinctive or conscious. If it doesn't, it simply does not succeed. Every kind of music that is listened to, does so because of that relevance. It's just that hip-hop relates to different things than traditional folk, whose relevance in turn differs from that of Dylan's songs or those of Johnny Cash. The youngsters coming out of the Newcastle course are looking for relevance to themselves too, and this might differ to ours. So it may be that some parts of the folk music we love may not have relevance to them any more - other than academic - ad they may be overlooked. THIS is where academia helps to preserve such temporarily "uninteresting" areas, until their turn comes again perhaps, in the cyclical way that interests and fads sometimes move.

Jaysus on a bike, but I've rambled...sorry.