What usually makes these little conversational hand-grenades so... um... productive is that they can be understood in three or four different ways. What generally happens is that the person who wants to start the... er... discussion makes a point using an extreme version of the statement, then rapidly relocates to a milder version when it comes under attack, before returning to the more provocative version for a counter-attack, and so on. Hours of fun.

In this case, the statement that "traditional music is for entertaining" could mean:

1 - Traditional songs should be sung well, so as to entertain the people listening
or
2 - Traditional songs should be sung and performed in an entertaining way, so as to draw in people who think they don't like it
or
3 - Traditional songs should be sung without any extraneous material, unless the material's also entertaining (so a historical introduction to The Dolphin is out, but Tony Capstick's introduction* would be fine)
or
4 - Traditional songs should be sung by entertainers, along with whatever else they entertain people with

I'd agree with 1, both agree & disagree with 2 (not everything can be made entertaining), but strongly disagree with 3 and 4.

*The name of this song is The Dolphin ... which is also the name of a pub in Rotherham where they used to have right rough strippers on. Weren't those strippers rough though? (continues)