"The whole thing was created by 'haters'"

Obviously, as a mere slip of a middle-aged man, I wasn't around at the height of the folk revival in the sixties and seventies. But I've read plenty of books that cover it (most recently "Dazzling Stranger" - the Bert Jansch biography - and "Electric Eden" by Rob Young) and listened to plenty of the wonderful albums this era produced. I can't see how the likes of Bert Jansch, Nic Jones, Mr Fox, Anne Briggs, Shirley Collins, Peter Bellmay etc etc could possibly be described as "haters" - all sorts of human emotions are present in their work, but that's not the immediate one that springs to mind. I've sure the same could be said of most of the people who got pleasure from listening to their records or seeing them perform.

And in my admittedly local experience of people who were around at the height of the revival and are still involved in singarounds and folk events now, again I cannot possibly attatch the word "haters" to them. The one thing that shines more strongly than anything else is the absolute joy and pleasure singing, playing and listening to this music gives them. The thing is, it's all too easy to issue a blanket dismissal people online and forget we're dealing with real people with all their individual strengths and foibles.

So I'm with Les on this one.

I would respectfully suggest, G, that you're conflating the pig-headed views of a small handful of Mudcat contributors with the participants in the revival as a whole.