Livelylass is right. or at least in proving my point on a couple of related threads doing the rounds.

Yes, there was a huge "movement" and many of the folk compilations on iTunes are from the late '60s and '70s, but this is as much to do with copyright and price as the quality of the music.

The essence of folk as a musical term, be it ballad style, cadences, incorporation of English speaking musical styles or whatever, is running a thread in the so called mainstream that some write off as being irrelevant. Irrelevant? really?

Men in sandals and women in ethnic skirts may not have much of a future, but the music they help to keep alive is live and kicking. really kicking. Flick to Sky Arts or BBC 4 and you see Seth Lakeman, Kate Rusby, Imagined Village, Richard Thompson Band... The old and the new, introducing the folk tradition to new audiences. Granted, not audiences that whinge about the quality of beer, any political view other than theirs, how hard it is to be a reed cutter in Norfolk or (at least once a night) a song about being an American caught up in Vietnam... (The nearest I do is sing Elton John's Daniel so no better myself I might add.)

But taking trad music (as I believe the thread is about) and doing what people have been doing for hundreds of years, adapting it to today.

(A classic example was yesterday on BBC Radio3, playing music used in BBC programs over the years. They played the theme from Blue Peter, hornpipe called Barnacle Bill, as many will know. What many may not know is that prior to Ralph Vaughan Williams getting his hands on it, all known references to the tune were" Bollocky Bill." A bit too much perhaps for Valerie Singleton and a much younger me....) Hence trad does not die, it evolves, t'was ever thus.