This is speculation not an assertion of fact. It appears to me that over several hundred years Americans absorbed music from England, Scotland and Ireland and other areas of Europe and from Africa and welded them into what is now called American folk music, Americana, Jazz, blues and even Pop music. A rich and diverse American National harvest.

Just as we in the United Kingdom began to reciprocate this cultural combining someone comes along and proselytises cultural purity versus cultural combination. Has this success left us culturally poorer? Is English Folk music a cultural fossil, no longer alive and no longer capable of change or growth?