I've sort of stayed out of this for a while, although I started it with the first thread. I don't think it's just about folk music, but music in general, that people aren't coming out much anymore to hear live music. They are constantly bombarded by a lot of noise, commercial junk, TV, radio, etc. It may be an example of what I learned in my college economics - Gresham's Law, the bad (money) drives out the good (money). People may not be aware of any good music and certainly don't want to hear anymore of that noise. I've encountered a few (non-musician) neighbors who have come to our house concerts or one of our jams, who are amazed that they've heard some really good music (had never been aware of it before) and it's just played by local people.

One of my main musical activities is running the monthly concerts for the Haller Lake Arts Council. We've put on a wide range of music with some of the best local talent - one of our best Klezmer bands (performed on Prairie Home Companion), a hot young (20somethings) old timey band, two fantastic young (20 yrs old) fiddle/violin players (an old-timey/Irish fiddler and a virtuoso gypsy jazz violinist with his own band), a very hot bluegrass band, Scottish harp, etc. etc., with only modest audiences at best. I don't think it has anything to do with the genre or style of music, it's just that people for whatever reason don't want to come out.

What John Ross said about fragmentation in Seattle, I think is true. We have a large fiddle community that plays mostly at contra dances (another large and separate community), the singer-songwriter community, a small trad folk community, and so on. And there's little overlap and each community is not large enough to provide a very large audience. Also there are many things going on, so whatever audience there is gets spread quite thin.

I think maybe the key is in building communities. Not necessarily just musicians, but people in general who live close by in the neighborhood, have common interests, etc. But that is a slow process and requires a lot of work. Maybe we have to be happy with the small audiences we have and nurture them and hope that they grow a little.

But I am still trying to puzzle this out, which is why I started the first thread.

Cheers, S. in Seattle