I was trying to ignore Steve's piffle about skiffle but since Georgina has mentioned the limited and specific influence of American imports (and remember that Lonnie Donegan came up through the Chris Barber Jazz Band, not the burgeoing folk revival), I'll have another go at putting a tin lid on this bollocks.

I really do despair of the 'folklorist' who declares a day, time and year when some English tradition 'died out'. Like hammer dulcimer playing. Bob Davenport has this story of how X (I won't say it was Kenny Goldstein cos it might not have been and I can't be arsed to check) made this very assertion and Bob remarked that he must have been hallucinating when he saw one being playing down at Hoxton Market that very afternoon. No-one had told the musician he had to stop because the text book said he didn't exist, and only start again when someone with a tape machine came along (which happened).

My grandfather used to play accordian for Morris and longsword until the outbreak of WWI. He got back from France but the rest of the side didn't. End of trad dancing in North Yorkshire in many but not all areas and his tradition had indeed been revived recently. But no-one told him either to stop playing and once he got a wireless and had the electricity put in, he played along to brass bands. He died just as the second revival was kicking in but didn't consider himself part of it. Nor do many hundreds of trad musicians who play up and down the English countryside, regardless of fashion. The English tradition was, and still is, largely hidden from public view, while any 'revival' is in parallel and largely unconnected. As such this music is an important historical chronicle and a reflection of the effects of socio-political changes on people's lives. Hitherto 'unknown' traditions are still being 'rediscovered' today (like customs, ceremonies, playground games). New traditions are being developed on our streets and wherever people from different cultures in today's Britain gather and share their heritages. How can anyone say that's not political?