i think you will find that folk clubs do that already Warwick -swapping etc-where geographically practical. Some folks just happen to go to more than one folk club as well. We have posters in the Union Bar at the local uni and we are very lucky-and priveleged to have many visitors to our club where regulars will step aside to hear something different. I do not think there is an issue, but then I do not think clubs are in decline either. I have seen the curriculum for the degree at Newcastle -most excellent for the art of perpetuating the music but Marje raises the point

'but is the documentary side of folk music absolutely fundamental to the tradition (maybe in border/war ballads or occupational songs? more debateable in supernatural tales?) or something that really came to the fore in the 1950s and 60s with MacColl et al? '



I would have thought it fundemental to the process of an enduring tradition and I do not think it was something invented by Ewan MColl in the 60's!