The original proposition in this thread is an assumption that something has gone wrong because English traditional music isn't at the forefront of peoples' consciousness - i.e. piped into airports, supermarkets, shops, tourist information bureaus. etc. - in the mainstream (whatever that is).

Well, "wrongness" or "rightness" can only be measured against a known target or a defined aim or an agreed set of standards. What target, aim or standards set would we agree for English traditional music (gawd 'elp us!) without the dreaded Definition rearing its ugly little head - and how would we measure how far along the road we'd travelled to gauge any "success" or "failure"? English Folk Music's 5-year Plan, eh?

I've been in the music game for nearly 50 years - sometimes for money and sometimes for free - and every single type of music I've played in all that time, whether solo, in a duo, trio or larger outfit, has been a minority music at the time I played it. Mainstream jazz in the late '70s/early '80s - 1950s rock'n roll in the '80s & '90s - Memphis and New Orleans Funk from the '90s to the mid-2000s. I currently play in a ceilidh band and also in a jazz duo doing stuff from the 1930s. And all through this time, I've dipped in and out of folk clubs and sessions, remembering where it started in a practical fashion for me all those years ago. Why did I choose the various kinds of music that I've played over the years? Because I liked it - because it hit the spot at the time and still does so, from time to time, today. No other reason. It's been largely minority interest music, away from the charts, only on national radio or TV on rare occasions - I never gave a flying fuck one way or the other about its national profile, and still don't - I just loved it and loved playing it for what it was.

Jim - just a word or two on the analogy you use (quite a bit here) of wanting music to be "what it says on the tin". Well, I can see the logic in all of that, particularly when one is paying for X and gets Y - but I'm sure you know as well as I do that music is not tins of beans (unless it's "canned" music, of course - groan…). And the difficulty - for me - of slavish attention to packaging and canning and labelling with a "commodity" like music is that music is a slippery and shape-shifting thing. The morphing from one style to another is what it does when we aren't looking. I happen to like that. Which is why, for example, the sound of Hamish Moore and Dick Lee weaving jazz phrases around "Staten Island" - on two high whistles in D - before sliding into bass clarinet riffs with table accompaniment, is utterly magical. To me.

Where would that fit into the 5-year plan, I wonder...