I'm not sure, Lighter, that trad music is any less valued than many other forms of music now. The days when there was a recognised body of popular tunes that everyone recognised are long gone - popular music is much more fragmented nowadays, and one person's iPod playlist may be totally different from anyone else's.

In other words, I'm not at all sure that there is any real "music of the people" now, in the sense of there being a shared musical understanding and a known collection of songs/tunes that most people are familiar with. What we have instead is a number of different musical genres, cults, trends and fashions, into which most people dip in a mix-and-match way. The trad genre isn't familiar to most people, but then neither are many of the newest types of dance music, or classical string quartets, or heavy metal.

If all this is true, then traditional music is certainly "music of the people", because we're people - enthusiasts, sure, but still people - and it's our music. What's more, much of the repertoire was (and some still is) actually created and shaped by ordinary people like us, to provide a soundtrack to their daily lives. This sets it apart from music that's been written for worship, or for the stage, or for wealthy patrons to hear in concerts, etc. It belongs to us in a special way, and as long as we continue to value it, play it and listen to it, it's far from dead.

Marje