Folk song existed long before folk clubs and the folk revival started and there is every reason to suppose that they will continue in their ever changing form after folk clubs have ceased to exist.

The folk clubs are a particularly British institution existing in Scotland, Wales and England. At a meal with Jerry O'Reilly this weekend, he stated that the places that are called 'folk clubs' in Ireland are run in a way that is very different from the rest of the British Isles.

I have sought out and found evenings of traditional music and song in countries as far apart as Turkey, the USA, the Gambia, Morocco and Hungary. All of them featured lovely traditional music presented in different ways, none were anything like folk clubs. What all of them shared was a sense that the presentation of a shared music that helps to cement communal identity and promote pride in their own way of doing things. I have never been to Puglia before, but I will be there in June and by asking around, I expect to find venues or locations where I can enjoy tarantella and pizzica song music and dance that I know exists there, just as I was able to find Cantu a tenore in Sardinia. All these are different ways in which ordinary people find their ordinary venacular secular and religious expression of feelings.

I love folk clubs; otherwise why would I have run them for fifty years; but I would consider myself very narrow minded if I thought they were the be all and end all.

Traditional music and song is characterised by continuity, orality, certain cultural traits, linguistic expressions, and change and this distinguishes it from classical and popular musics. One of the ways that it is changing in the UK as Steve and myself and others with a long involvement have pointed out is that the folk song and music is taking its part on a much wider mix of presentational formats and in my opinion this is healthy. To fixate on folk clubs alone is to miss the bigger picture.