It's a question I sometimes ask myself when I go to the theatre and to jazz gigs, it seems it is we "Grey Panthers" or "Baby Boomers" who are keeping live music & performance alive. At blues gigs, though, I'm pleased to see more young people coming, both players and audience. I still see young folkies coming to open mics so I guess it isn't all bad news.

I'm part of the folk revival 'lost generation' and when I first got into the music at the end of the 70s my like-minded friends and I were quite often the youngest people in the audience or performing. That situation carried on until about ten or so years ago, but now there's a whole wave of people younger than me coming out to all manner of folk/trad gigs and sessions and morris and ceilidhs.

The really encouraging thing is that (as far as I can see anyway, I'm too busy enjoying the music to be going round checking dates of birth)
there *continues* to be an influx of young enthusiasts - what, for the sake of a ridiculously broad-brush generalisation, you might call the Spiers & Boden generation, are moving on through, and there's a whole new tranche coming in behind them. So like S Astray I'm very confident that something instantly recognisable as my kind of music will still be there all the time I need it and well beyond.

But then I went to a couple of South Manchester folk *clubs* recently to cheer on a friend - and (apart from the friend herself, who was the booked act and is younger than me) I was right back in being the youngest person in the room ....