Like Desert Dancer, I'm confident that Peter and Mary Alice Amidon will put together a fine programme, nevertheless I would be very sad if traditional song were downgraded to merely one category amongst many, as the brief description suggests. What used to be unique about Folk Music Week was that it was the one week of the CDSS calendar focussed primarily on song as opposed to dance. Not to the exclusion of dance, of course: when I was on staff in 2001 during Sara Grey's stint as Programme Director, a well-attended camp included - as well as traditional songs and ballads from England, Ireland and North America, and terrific Balkan harmony - Quebecois and Balkan dance classes, and evening contradances that were busy every night, thanks to that year's charismatic caller, Mary Virginia Brooks.

The problem for any annual event with a faithful regular audience that's advancing in years, is to attract new people without alienating the older ones. FMW has made some attempts to do this (some would say that class leaders from the younger generation might have been brought in earlier), but without squaring the circle. I know that Dave and Anni worked their socks off this and last year to make a success of the week, but were hampered by the kind of financial constraints that lead to a combination of a limited artistic budget and high sign-up prices.

Folk Music Week has a proud tradition of featuring some of the very best traditional singers from both sides of the Atlantic. Here's what Jeff Davis said about his early experiences of FMW, in an interview I conducted with him for 'The Living Tradition' last year: "I went along at the age of seventeen; I met Jean Ritchie, I met Gale Huntington, and I met Larry Older, so right there I was hearing Kentucky ballads, whaling songs, lumberjack songs. That same week I heard lots of English tunes, and watched Morris and sword dancing. I was hooked and, over the years, Pinewoods introduced me to Louis Killen, Norman Kennedy, Margaret Barry and Michael Gorman, Joe Heaney, Bessie Jones, old-time fiddler Benton Flippen… well, the list could go on for quite a while. If I'd never been anywhere else but there, I would have had quite a musical education." When I was on staff in 2008, I remember a young scholarship student telling me how thrilled she'd been to be at camp with a legend like Lou Killen, the previous year.

Anglo-American traditional songs and ballads have a devoted, if limited, following in the Eastern USA. My experience at schools such as Augusta and Swanannoa tells me that there can be a natural affinity between traditional song as a class topic, and harmony singing, or old-time country, or traditional dance music. However, keeping traditional song centre stage should be CDSS's priority in revamping FMW. At a time when our own EFDSS has shaken off its old 'DEAFASS' (Dance Earnestly and Forget About Song) image and involved itself with cutting edge performances of traditional song, it would be ironic if the North American sibling organization were to take a step in the opposite direction.