TBSMF
I appears we got off on the wrong foot – certainly my fault for over-reacting to phrases like 'finger-in-ear' which is guaranteed to send my blood pressure soaring – for which I apologise. I really live for the day when we graduate beyond juvenile name-calling.
As I said, I've listened to all those you mentioned, plus many more, and they certainly don't come anywhere near my idea of good – or even fair, performers of folk song; nor will they attract new blood into the clubs – if that is the main aim. Tweaking and adapting the music to draw in new people has never worked and has usually done far more damage than good.
"We have to re-brand folk music as trendy (and) cool "
Why? In my experience, adults, particularly middle-aged ones who try to be 'trendy and cool' usually end up as an embarrassment. Young people (or anybody) will be drawn (or not) to folk music for what it is, not for how it is packaged - kids have an alarming ability to see through bullshit!. Anyway, it's adults, not just young people who need to be drawn in and making it "trendy and cool" is far more likely to put them off rather than attract them.
For me, Harmonium Hero's posting came as a hurricane of fresh air:
"If you want to run a folk club, you should have the strength of your convictions and call it a folk club. If you start by apologising for folk, then how can you expect anybody to believe in it? And if you call it something else, then you're likely to end up with something that isn't a folk club, and that's likely to discourage the folk fans."
That is what it should be about; nothing short of giving the music you believe to be important to as many people as possible by presenting it at its best – as things stand at present, anything else is re-arranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic rather than looking for the hole!
The clubs didn't gradually lose their audiences; the bulk of the losses came when they stopped presenting folk song – when it was possible to come away from a club without hearing one; when they moved away from their source and their output became undefinable – we simply didn't know what we were going to be given when we walked through the door, so we went away. All this can be fairly well dated by the 'Crap Begets Crap' debate that took place at the time in the pages of 'Folk Review' and elsewhere, and what immediately followed.
It's a myth that Irish children are taught from an early age – a few are, and up to fairly recently, the vast majority of them abandoned it a soon as they got out from under parental control. What has happened here is that persistence (not compromise) on the part of a dedicated few has turned the situation round and, certainly here in the West, youngsters are flocking to the music, guaranteeing that it will continue for at least another generation.
We have the choice of sessions here four nights a week and it can be heard and viewed on a regular basis on radio and t.v. - in performance and in documentary and discussion form.
There are two magnificent national archives of folk material and numerous regional ones. Here in Clare we have recently purchased premises and are in the process of setting up a local archive/visitors centre. All this on top of a theatre, Glór, in the county town of Ennis, which came into existence in order to present traditional music.
All this is a stark contrast to the situation a few years ago when the music was treated by the establishment with just as much contempt (diddley-di music) as in the UK.
None of this has been achieved by watering down the product, sexing it up or treating it as a poor relation to the pop industry; groups like The Bothy Band, Moving Hearts, and Planxty came and went without making one iota of difference outside of the immediate folk scene. In the main the music being played now is unadulterated folk played by people, young and old who take it seriously, enjoy it and value and respect it – that is what has made the difference.
"Jim. By the way, when was "the best of it?"
The best of it was when you could go out three or four nights a week to listen to folk music ranging from reasonable to excellent; when you walked your fingers down the columns of Melody maker to choose where to go that night; when you quite often had to queue to get in; when you left a club walking a foot above the pavement because of what you had just heard - but most of all, when you came away having heard a night of FOLK song (long ballads, short ones, transportation songs, rural love songs, urban ones, comic songs, bawdy songs, erotic songs sea songs..... and newly-written songs that were identifiable as having been based on folk styles and forms) - they were the good days!   
Banjiman
I don't believe that the 1954 – or any definition will draw in one single person, I don't have a solution to that one; nor does anybody else from this, or any other threads I've seen on the subject. Nor do I believe that adhering to this or any definition in the running of a club is either possible or desirable; without new songs, the clubs will become museums. The definition merely makes a fair stab at summing up what I believe to be folk music; it is a reference point to what our music is. In the absence of another, it'll do for the time being.
Jim Carroll
Sorry about the delay in responding; we're in the middle of a week-long traditional music school here, where the main problem has been which session to squeeze into to listen to the best of Irish music and singing.