Dick,

First of all Roy Harris is virtually retired from professional singing. As singers get older they tend to sing less.

However I believe he came out of retirement recently to compere the Cyril Tawney Memorial Concert at .......err......Cecil Sharp House.

There is a whole festival devoted to traditional singing less then five miles from where I live. Google Bradfield Traditional Music Festival. Real (i.e. done for enjoyment) traditional singing carries on in the outer Sheffield area at places like shepherd´s meets and hunt suppers and in a local pub each Saturday night. Course it might not make the headlines where you live Dick, in fact it doesn´t even make the headlines around here, but it does exist. And we have six weeks or so of traditional carols every year and a sell-out festival devoted to those carols every two years. People come from all over the world for that. Even Ireland this year.

The idea that professional organisers will not include traditional singers whereas non-professionals will, just does not reflect reality as it exists. One place where it was usually possible to hear traditional unaccompanied singing was the National, closed for reasons other than finance.

What they bring to a festival is much more than programming. Fund raising outside ticket sales is an important job, which is why they spend huge amounts of time doing it. It enables more artists to be booked, it enables community involvement often with young people and it enables modern IT to be used to spread the message, amongst other things.

Virtually all the organisers, professional and amateur have a love of folk music and that includes unaccompanied singing. Waterson:Carthy are still a top draw at festivals and whilst they do use guitar and fiddle, they are hardly a rock band.

Unaccompanied singing has never been a great draw at festivals. Unaccompanied singers have been included, and it seems to me they still are.

First of all there were no young people. When presented with a list of young people you switch tack and say no unaccompanied singers.

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