Just come from a singaround myself. Brilliant night, lots of younger people in (mostly doing old songs). Lots of harmonies; probably the best version of "Let union be" you could ever hear, and a very enjoyable version of "Molly Malone" (!). Overall it was about 50/50 trad/contemporary - maybe a bit more or less either way, depending how you classify 'trad'.

So no, Al, I don't want to turn 'folk' into a museum piece, or whatever it was. But I enjoyed this evening more than I would an evening which was 80% contemporary, and I think if it had been 80% traditional I would have enjoyed it even more.

Steve G: If new songs are not added to the general repertoire we are a museum and nothing else.

It doesn't seem to bother classical musicians; personally, I don't think it should bother us. Peter Bellamy, Martin Graebe and Chris Wood are/were fine songwriters, but I don't think it'd be a tragedy if their songs dropped out of circulation. I do think it'd be a tragedy if nobody was singing the likes of Some Tyrant or Willie's Drowned in Yarrow, because then we wouldn't just have lost a songwriter or two - we'd have lost a whole different kind of song.