"the enthusiastic response it's generated from people"
The problem for me with this age-old argument is that I am always left with the opinion that it only generates an enthusiasm for that particular approach, and when other methods are presented it leaves a potential audience cold.
I first came into contact with 'live folk' in Liverpool with the Spinners. After I had been attending their club for a year I was on the point of pulling out altogether (there are only so many renditions of 'Fried Bread and Brandy O' you can take) when somebody said "have you heard MacColl's Folkways set of 'English and Scottish Ballads'?
While it's true that I wouldn't have been there in the first place if it hadn't been for the four lads (and Jaquie McDonald in those days), 'gawd bless 'em', their particular approach wasn't enough to hold me and I had to start virtually from scratch.
This argument was used when Shirly Ellis's 'Rubber Dolly' hit the top of the charts - "folk music had arrived' - but it hadn't, of course.
Some years ago the organisers of the Clare Traditional Singing Weekend (exclusively unnaccompanied) was offered the services of Christie Moore, a perfectly valid reason for having him was that they themed the week-end as 'Political Songs'. When the news got out, hordes of youngsters decended on Ennistymon and it was believed that this would be the big breakthrough - it wasn't. Even though we were treated to a festival of superb singing from all the performers - the youngsters never came back. Christie has a large following for his own style, which isn't traditional - and there's the rub.
If an audience is to be won for traditional singing, it has to be for its own merits and not for something else, and thereby hangs our problem.
"I'd like to see much more similar debate"
I agree with CS - I'd like to hear such a debate on renditions of ballads which turn people of and off (on the understanding that we are expressing personal opinions and not trying to impose our own likes and dislikes on others).
Jim Carroll