"A folk club is no more traditional than rock and roll."

Surely that depends on the folk club! I've been to folk clubs where people do little else than produce inferior versions of 60s pop songs, in which case the quotation above might apply. But I've also been to folk clubs where the bulk of the material is traditional. Such clubs provide an environment where we have the chance to both sing/play traditional music and to listen to it. We don't therefore have to "confuse" (as one contributor put it) folk clubs and traditional music. They are clearly not the same thing, but the folk club can have a useful role to play in supporting/furthering traditional music.

Most of us don't have the luxury of strolling into the local pub to find the locals singing in the bar; or a landlord who would encourage us to break into song. Folk clubs (along with other events) can provide us with the hard found space to perform traditional music; they should not be deemed irrelevant to it.