Just an observation about the marketing of "Folk Festivals" here in Australia. We have a new "trad and now" magazine. It is trying to present all that's going on on the so-called Folk scene and a difficult job it must be too. It does have articles by, and about, older "traditional" musicians, but the main look is YOUNG, GLOSSY, NEW, and POP. There was a long article about a young sexy group who gave advice on how to get booked at folk festivals. It was interesting reading I can tell you, and they were right! Spot on! They were exactly like the acts that make up the bulk of the theme-park folk festivals we seem to have here now. Not all festivals, but most.
Seems, if I want to be part of it all, I have to look young, beautiful, slim to the point of wasted away, wear the shortest of skirts -something vaguely ethnic, and do dance routines. Won't matter much how I sound as long as it's loud and I include words like "Celtic" (pronounced seltic and not the way I was taught)and they seem meaningful without being too specific. I will have to have written the words myself. A band of beautiful young musicians is preferable to a solo singer. Solo male is OUT! unless he's a blues musician and then one male blues singer per festival is allowed.
We do have our gatherings of old and young musicians, of traditional singers and singer-songwriters, of singers in sing-arounds, but they are rare at folk festivals. Some of us, particularly if we are isolated by distance, do feel the pop takeover of folk festivals keenly,not because we are no longer young and lovely but because we can't take what now is marketed as "Folk music".