I am not sure I really agree with the underlying tenet of this thread.

As far as I know I am many generations English. Every so often a song touches something (always a song, never a tune) and suddenly I can (Metaphorically) see back centuries. The issues of those times set out in the song move me as burningly as any heated current debate. Only English songs do this to me. One or two Irish songs do something different whch inspires a feeling of parallelism. ANd generally I feel ENglish song more fully than other song.

Also there are traditional songs with as much of a message today as they ever had - perhaps "rigs of the times", or "Shaking of the sheets".

No, I think that the displacement of ENglish song and music from centre stage is probably sex. Dance has become so intrinsic a part of courtship ritual that traditional song (with a time signature of "one") is marginalised, and ENglish traditional dance is Morris (single sex, if you want to be traditional) or Playford (bowdlerised).

Therefore the young, for whom the biological imperative is overpowering, go elsewhere.

Apart from a few. Like Liza Carthy who as well as all the foreign stuff she plays and sings still does ENglish music with balls (or whatever the gender equivalent is). But htese are exceptions from the general rule.