Agreed then. It is possible to write a good song about pretty well anything. Including navels.

And it is possible to write a bad song about pretty well anything.

What matters isn't what category a song falls into, but whether it works as a song.

The advantage old songs have over new songs is that there is normally noone around who has a particular reason to sing an old song that is not much cop.

To get back to the track of the thread, though - if festival organisers are ignoring and excluding music that ought to have a place, the answer is to give it a place, by organising fringe festivals that fills the gap. In my experience that seems to happen. Sometimes the fringe gets bigger than the original festival. Sidmouth started out as a dance festival, and the singing was very much of a fringe. Festivals that are all concerts get surrounded by sessions, by singarounds, by mini-concerts.

As Joe Hill said "Don't mourn. Organise."