Bert;
"You missed the fact that when most of us started, we couldn't sing worth a damn."
Didn't miss it at all; that's a problem we all had to face no matter what kind of music we chose to follow, but in an atmosphere like the one created by nasty little discussions like this one, the job is made a damn sight more difficult by snidey intolerant infantile name-calling like this that take the piss out of other peoples' tastes when you're attempting to draw youngsters into your music.
All this has nothing whatever to do with this argument and doesn't alter the fact one iota that youngsters are flocking to "purist" traditional music in Ireland while in the UK........; somebody must be doing something right somewhere!
"You missed the fact that if we don't listen to new self penned pieces then the tradition will certainly die."
Didn't miss that one either; the person who influenced me most in the time I've spent following folk song was the best singer of traditional songs I ever met, yet he managed to write ten times more contemporary songs based on traditional styles than anyone I know, some of which have become all-time classics that are often mistaken for real traditional songs.
I was referring to some of the navel gazing, introspective self-indulgent angst that passed for folk-song in many of the clubs I no longer go to exactly for that reason.
In the end I don't give a fiddler's fart who listens to or sings what, when or where; what does piss me off is ignorant and intolerant attacks on other peoples tastes, usually from people who throw all their toys out of the pram when their own music is criticised in the slightest way.
One thing is sure; if every 'folk' club in Britain were to be struck by a tsunami tomorrow, the music that would survive as 'folk' would be that which has been defined, collected, documented, researched, archived, published and generally made available as "folk" – the stuff that people sneer at here as "purist".
How about a bit of "live and let live?"
Jim Carroll