"Sorry that you don't find his music interesting."
Sorry you found the Singers Club boring - chacun son goût, I suppose
"We are obviously not worthy to lick your boots."
Don't be facetious - you'll end up as twisted and snidey as Glueman.
"To maintain the railway analogy,"
Again you have chosen to ignore one of the main functions of the tradition, it's social influence.
The loss of the oral and musical traditions among Travellers contributed to its fragmentation as a cohesive community, the most noticable being the creation of an age gap which has let to a huge increase in crime among youth, particularly drug-influenced.
A more sininter aspect was its contribution towards the divisions between the settled and Travelling communities. Travellers were once valued as tradesmen in the farming area, but also as singers, storytellers, musicians and news carriers. The disappearance of all these has created a hostile and apparently unbreachable gap between the two communities; the Travellers bearing a seething resentment towards the people they believe to be responsible for their present deplorable situation, the settled attitude being one verging on ethnic cleansing.
The loss of the old traditions has also led to fragmentation and isolation within the settled communities themselves. Within living memory the house and crossroads dances were the cultural centeres where people gathered to dance, play, sing and tell stories. The forcible break up of these by the combined efforts of church and state bodies led to their disappearance and increased isolation.
Interestingly, one of the features of the improvement of the fortunes of traditional music is the re-establishment of many of these gatherings, albeit in bars rather than in poeple's homes.
Jim Carroll