Nobody has a right to say that traditional songs have no relevance - all they are entitled to say is that they have no relevance to them.
Over the last forty odd years I have seen audiences moved to gales of laughter or to tears or paroxisms of anger by ballads and songs that have lain dormant for centuries.
Shakespeare wrote his plays five centuries ago; in the intervening centuries there have been long periods when those plays have not been peformed - they died; why weren't they given a decent funeral and forgotten? Because somebody recognised their worth and preserved them - try to get into a half decent production of Hamlet nowadays and see how long you have to queue for a ticket and how much you have to pay for it. If preserving those plays was a conceit, I'm am more than grateful that somebody was conceited enough to take the trouble.
We watched with some degree of anger and despair while the Irish Travellers magnificent song tradition disappeared virtually overnight to be replaced by what - Dallas, Coronation Street and East Enders. We met singers like Mary Delaney with repertoires of going on for 200 songs, most of them new to me; what should we have done, walked away and said "Ah well, they're no longer relevant; let's leave her to her memories". Her Traveller neighbour, Mikeen McCarthy - 130 stories, 60 songs - masses upon masses of information about ballad selling, street singing, old cures, lore, the traditional trades of tinsmithing, horse trading..... Mikeen died a few years ago and had his information not been recorded it would have died with him - would that have been good or bad thing.
People carried in their heads down the centuries the history and culture of people who society has regarded have no history and culture - it is a supreme arrogance to suggest that what they carried is no longer of interest and not worth preserving.
G - I suggest that those of us who would rather watch Corrie and East Enders (and listen to up to the minute hits like 24 Hours to Tulsa maybe) go and do so and leave us to our ploutering in the past.
Jim Carroll