Folk music has only little to do with style or content, and very much to do with context. A few friends in a pub singing for their own entertainment is folk music. A superstar performing the same song on stage to a paying audience is something different. Much as I like it, Thin Lizzy singing "Whiskey in the Jar" was not folk music. On the other hand, a few mates singing "Why Why Why Delilah" in the pub is something like folk music.

Much of the traditional *material* is saved forever. It is written down, recorded, and on CD and video. Anyone with a basic knowledge of music, some enthusiasm and some time, could go and learn "The Seeds of Love" from permanent resources.

But the context is more fragile. When we stop thinking of "folk" as something we do, and start thinking of it only as something we buy, the battle will be lost. Tradition is an activity, not a product.

Folk clubs have a role in preserving the context. They are artificial, compared to an informal session, but they do provide a context for a range of performers to perform among friends for each others' enjoyment.

So folk clubs have to be fun, and both inviting and welcoming. I am regularly one of the youngest people present, at 45. We don't necessarily need an input of young people, but we certainly need an input of **younger** people. If they don't enjoy their first visit, there may be no second visit.

So next time you go to your folk club, look around the room. how would you see it if it was your first visit, and you knew no one there? Look at it as an outsider. Is it cliquey? Do the people look bored? Is there laughter?

Next time you go, think about your own song or tune: does it suit your voice and style? Do you know it well? Are you performing it properly, or just battling bravely to the end of it? Does it leave people clapping politely, or smiling and applauding? Was it suitable? Was a perfect performance of a 10 verse ballad appropriate to that part of the evening?

Folk club organisers are of course volunteers, but should not be immune to "critique" - which is slightly different from "criticism".

Do you carefully choose what order to put floor singers on? or do you favour your mates? Do you know when to ask "Big Dave" to liven things up after two or three dirges? Or do you just pass the "conch shell" around the room clockwise, regardless of who comes up next? If there is a new visitor, do you speak to them in the interval? Do you include them in the banter? Introduce them to someone?

Does your club have a website, and advertise outside the "folky community"?