Conrad, you've consistently ignored my very persistent requests for examples, from you, of the folk music you're concerned about. My requests are not made mischievously, or just as needling questions - there's a serious intent behind them. And this is what it is:

1. Your thesis is that the whole basis on which folk music is performed - particularly, but not totally, at festivals - should be completely altered and become as financially free as possible. Your "radical paradigm".

2. The rationale behind (1) is that this music is a vital part of the cultural "lifeway" and is too important to be considered as mere entertainment - too important, in most cases, to be left to money-grabbing professionals (as you see them). The living tradition, according to you, should be spread as far and as wide as possible, even to those who know or might not want to know much about it.

Now - if the world of folk music performance is to be turned inside out out to accommodate these theories, we need to have evidence why. This evidence must surely include some concrete, positive examples of what the music is? However, not a single one of your posts has included examples of what the music might be and why it is so important - so important that the whole scene has to be radically changed.

To say, "look all around you", or "ballads and tunes are everywhere", is just fluff - no evidence at all.

If you can't anwer these questions seriously and with hard evidence, then I can only come to the conclusion - as others probably have - that your "radical paradigm" is driven, not by musical or cultural altruism, but by sheer envy of others and annoyance at not being part of the 'scene' in Baltimore or anywhere else for that matter.