I agree completely with Jim (if you're still there, Jim!) about the standard of singing. But we still need to find the good singers. Younger people are much more likely to play insturments and much less likely to sing than their parent's generation were, so song clubs tend to be attended mainly by the over-50s. This may be because there's a lot less singing in schools now, certainly once you get to secondary age.

I think another thing that has contributed to the decline in singing in clubs is the number of community and folk-based choirs around. This new wave of choirs tends not to have auditions, and many don't require the members to read music, so they're much more accessible than many of the more conventional choral socieities.

Lots of people who want to find a non-threatening, friendly environment where they can sing with others are now joining such choirs rather than looking to folk clubs, as some of them might have done in the past, and so they never get to the point where they want to sing solo or "perform" alone.

For the moment I'm not commenting on how much of all this is desirable, or whether the situation is better or worse than 30 years ago. I'm just giving another couple of reason why song clubs are struggling and less numerous than in the past.

Marje