"I still await the evidence that recent songs are getting passed on down the generations..."

"What evidence do you need?"

As several people have now pointed out, in order to discuss the original question we have to decide what 'traditional' actually means. Clearly it meant one thing then and another now. I've tried to remember to qualify at least some of my comments with the phrase "in the old sense". However, as far as the dictionary goes the main meaning is given as:

"The passing down of elements of a culture from generation to generation, especially by oral communication."

A secondary meaning, "A time-honored practice or set of such practices." is relevant here, too. (I don't think anyone here has yet claimed Slade's 'Merry Christmas' as traditional, but it's certainly part of what is now the traditional Christmas soundtrack, like it or not)

When I talk about "getting passed down" I'm talking about songs being passed from parents to children, and then on to the next generation and the one after that. Sheila Kay Adams' family singing tradition, for instance. What Rob is describing (and I'm genuinely fascinated by it) is a process by which songs are accessible to the generation below the one that first enjoyed them, but as the result of a more complex series of processes that no doubt involves peer-to-peer transmission but also Youtube, Spotify, CDs, LPs, etc. There's always a fixed reference point to return to. Of course that also means that those songs will be available for ever, for anyone who wishes to access them.

When I said "it's too early to tell", I was imagining a list that might have been drawn up in 1960, of songs that would stand the test of time. What would it have included? 'Oh, What a Beautiful Morning'? 'Getting to Know You'? 'Singing in the Rain'? 'Ol' Man River'? As it happens I remember my Mum singing the first two of those around the house, and could manage at least a verse and chorus of the first. But I don't sing them around the house (nor much else, for that matter, unless I'm practising) and I guess Rob's young musicians in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk don't sing them either. Of course they'll always be there for people who like to watch classic old musicals, but I suspeect they'll fall out of more general circulation in another generation.

Now I'd concede that those songs from the shows represent a style of music that the next generation largely rejected, whereas the generation below mine hasn't (entirely) rejected the guitar-based popular music idiom that arose in the 1960s. Also, there's been a democratisation of music-making since working-class youths of the 60s achieved fame by playing electric guitars, then punks and rappers showed that music-making was accessible to anyone, instruments and technology became more accessible, and venues like my local music pub started running open-mikes. There's plenty of opportunity to get involved in music today. Nonetheless, those twenty-year-olds who are playing 'Hotel California' (do the three table-slaps make it the new 'Wild Rover', I wonder?) are still part of a select community that chooses to entertain itself by sharing music, a bubble no less than the folkie bubble CS identified.

fRoots magazine reckons from surveys that 53% of its readers play an instrument, two thirds of those in public - but that's fRoots, which champions essentially home-made music. What percentage would you find amongst the readers of Auto Trader, Country Life, The Spectator, Cosmopolitan or Nuts? There is a subculture of music-makers, but I suggest (while respecting various bits of testimony above) it's still a minority. In the heyday of what (with all the usual disclaimers) I'll call the folk tradition, the majority of people sang, albeit without necessarily having a large repertoire. According to Roud, "people sang in all kinds of places and contexts, and there was probably no situation in which people did not sing at one time or another". He goes on to list instances both private and public: the home, the pub, the workplace, etc. According to an account of turn-of-the-century Nova Scotia:

"In the town where I lived until I was twelve years old, almost everyone sang these old songs and ballads. Neighbors were few and far between, books and magazines were scarce and we had to make the best of what we had... If a stranger came to house or to one of our neighborhood gatherings, it was considered a breach of good manners not to ask him to sing."

We simply don't have that kind of culture now, however much wonderful music is made in our present culture. Celebrate the difference, but recognize it. And recognize too that, in the great scheme of things, it doesn't actually matter very much, other than as an interesting discussion topic.

"I was thinking more of Riverdance actually"

Then why not say so? Instant consensus, and no subsequent ill-humour!