One thing that rarely gets stated in discussing why folk clubs have declined in popularity, or in suggesting ways folk clubs could appeal more to the young, is that, quite simply, traditional music merely stopped being so popular.

Y'know, rather than looking for institutional reasons why folk clubs waned, isn't it bloody obvious that folk's popularity was a pretty unlikely fluke to begin with? It's fairly weird that the folk boom ever happened in the first place. One of those odd twists of fashion.

Rather than it being anything to do with traddies versus singer-songwriters, or the rise of comedy-type folkies in the 70s, or the lack of strong voices or whatever ... isn't it simply just that folk was always a bit square ... and so it was only a matter of time before its holiday in popular culture had to end.

I was talking to someone from an organisation that provides funding for specialist music genres recently. And they were calling for submissions of ideas of making folk (among other genres) more accessible to young people. I told them that I genuinely thought they were throwing their money away: you can only make folk cool by making cool folk music. And, face it, Sam Lee is never going to seem as cool as Fat White Family, Tyler the Creator or Micachu & the Shapes.