Collectors of songs thought that they had heard the swan song in the pre-1914 era but they were wrong. 1960 saw a great folksong song revival.

This isn't strictly true. What the collectors were interested in was the tail-end of a vibrant culture of working-class song making in a particular idiom (which, as Sam Lee & others have demonstated, isn't quite dead yet!) - whereas the Great Folksong Revival (which began somewhat earlier than 1960) is something very different indeed. This is why there is a very clear demarkation between 'Traditional Singers and 'Revival Singers', though there is a persistent conceit amongst certain members of the latter that what they are doing is 'Continuing The Tradition', but nothing could be further from the truth.

This isn't to devalue what the Revival has done, and is continuing to do, just to say that one thing it most certainly ISN'T doing is continuing the tradition. Indeed, one might argue that The Revival has done much to obfuscate the vibrancy of Traditional Folk Song by an over association with other musical idioms (singer-songwriter / MOR pop / rock derivations etc.) in the name of Folk. Though no purist - I'd say myself that the only way to experience the pure beauty of a Traditional Folk Song is to listen to a Traditional Singer singing it.

Songs like Yesterday & Stan are products of respective traditions of working-class song-making every bit as vital as that which gave us 'Folk Songs'. Both of these songs and the people who made them have inspired & redefined the traditions that gave rise to them. Both were masters of their respective arts who raised the bar for successive artists to rise to. In rock this lead to all sorts of developments (where would the glories of Prog be without The Beatles??) and in Hip-Hop you can hear how Eminem's edgy storytelling & exacting use of language & sampling have inspired dozens of artists who followed him, both great & small. Kanye West is an obvious example, but I've heard virtuoso street rappers in London, Manchester and Liverpool who have seized upon Eminem's vibrant style and taken it even highter - and I'm talking kids as young as 12 here.

This music - Popular Music - is truly living & vibrant vernacular tradition; wheras Folk is a revived idiomatic hobby that operates at several very significant cultural & social removes from The Tradition that it supposedly revives. Maybe that accounts for its curmudgeonly passions and fundamentalist religiosity? Who knows? But don't get me wrong I've been a Folkie since the age of 11, and 40 years on I'm a Folkie still; I only feel the need to add such qualifications least one of my accusers comes along howling about me belittling 'their kind of music' rather than just trying to keep things in perspective.