Cultural traditions of performance (but also literature and art) need an audience to survive. No audience and they die out. And of course they need performers and participants-who in turn need an income. An audience for live performance plays a role in sustaining a tradition that goes beyond being consumers who pay.

~~Much as I dislike the crypto-racism that underlies this thread, I think that recent cuts in arts council funding would be a more constructive target. By the same token, better arts funding will accomplish more than any 'award' scheme. (Awards did not keep the old ballads alive, sometimes in forms longer than any within these shores, in the Appalachians.)

As to National award schemes--they seem more or less like feeding wild animals the wrong kind of human food and risk spawning commercialism, standardization, whatnot.