"One of the themes that pops up regularly here is whether the folk scene is doing enough to attract younger people through the doors and thereby to perpetuate the scene when us oldsters go to that great ceilidh in the sky."

Just to back-track, above is Will Fly's opening sentence from his first post. My reponse to this is: I don't care! I do not consider it my responsibility to attract young people (or anyone else for that matter) into 'the fold'. I'm not an evangelist and I dislike evangelism - for a start. If people - young or old - find their way to folk music, that's fine and I will welcome them - but that's where my responsibility stops. If the next generation allows the music to die out, that's their responsibility, not mine!

I also deplore this tendency to dumb stuff down in order to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. Recently, David Simon, creator of the hit American cop series, 'The Wire', was asked if he thought his work was likely to attract the 'average viewer'. I found his response immensely refreshing; he said: "f*ck the average viewer!" And I say if folk music isn't 'cool enough' for young people - f*ck them too!