Really? I'm not denying the importance of music in people's lives now, but for the majority of people I know outside folk circles it's music they listen to rather than perform themselves.

People only sang back then because they didn't have better ways of hearing music; these days they do. No matter how one experiences music - any music - it still has supreme personal meaning to the life and culture of the listener. Even a performing Folky (like me) experiences more recorded music than any other, and the music that means most to me personally, culturally, exists on records, including CDs & MP3s. Right now it's Caravan's live version of For Richard recorded at The Fairfield Hall in 1974. Previously available on the long vanished (from my archives anyway) Canturbury Tales album, I found a copy of the live CD in Fopp in MCR the other day for £3. I could write pages of what this recording means to me, my life, my culture, my people, my spirtuality and general sense of joy (certainly a good deal more than any Folk Song ever will) but this is neither the time nor the place.

What I will say is that your post is the worst of the Fundamentalist Folk Myth writ in tones so condescending I would sooner there was no Folk that to hear such talk. For shame. Think on this, when they play someone's favourite music at their funeral, what your hearing is the story of their lives, be it Barry Manilow, Frank Sinatra, Lieutenant Pigeon, Blondie, Enya, Bowie, Free, whatever. But still, no doubt the Folkies know better, eh?

*

And regarding my earlier post - the mirror was concave.