Maybe if we stayed in our locality and community we'd get back to being traditional musicians and singers rather than folkies

Debatable - and now impossible. In any case, earlier communities, in this country, at any rate, were not a series of isolated pockets of civilisation. People travelled, and spread goods, news, words and music around the country. Have a read of "The Time Traveller's Guide To Medieval England" by Ian Mortimer - this gives a good account of the social movement of people and society generally in the centuries after the Norman Conquest, and is a fascinating read.