"Musicians will not be constrained from playing what they want to play -"
Course they won't - but clubs that advertise themselves as 'folkclubs' commit themselves to providing a certain type of music
I repeat - I'd love to be a fly on the wall at a local pop venue if a singer turned up with 'selections from the Joe Heaney Songbook'
It's misleading to talk about constraining anybody - it's about giving what you say you give and respecting the music for its importance
"Now I joke that I have friends in the room if anyone else turns up and sings a traditional song" - how sad, but my point is well made.
"what the living tradition of folk has turned our music into"
What has our tradition of folk turned into exactly and where does the Bonmnzo Dog Doodah Band fit in?
We don't have a 'living tradition' anymore - would that we did.
What goes on in folk clubs is as divorced from the real world as The Atheneum and in no way speaks for people's culture any more, let alone change it - specially when it is possible to take the piss when a folk song is sung.
Folk song has not touched the world outside the clubs and until it does enough to give the wider population a choice of changing long - establishd terms, the old definitions remain
"widest terminology. "
Define that "widest terminology".
Jim Carroll