Long geezer ramble (safely ignored)

My only experience is with the American old time music scene, specifically old time music festivals.

In my part of the states there are two distinct but slightly overlapping groups, old time musicians & folk musicians. For example, the former will be out in force at Clifftop WV. The latter make the annual pilgrimage to the Philadelphia Folk Festival. That is not to say there the two sets have no common members, but their intersection tends to be a very small subset of each group. Mudcat seems to cater more to the latter than the former. WHICH IS WONDERFUL. NO COMPLAINTS HERE.

First,
Kid-focused stuff at festivals is one GREAT IDEA. Cheap tickets is a second, but different, GREAT IDEA The two great ideas are not necessarily economically compatible.

but...

In the old days

Whether it was the Morris Brothers festival at Ivydale WV, or Galax, or the Brandywine Mountain Music Convention there were no activities aimed at kids.

We took our kids to old time festivals because we took our kids everywhere. The festivals were always cheap. They were always campground affairs and the basic pattern was to set up camp (in an army surplus tent, or under a parachute, or in a teepee, or a converted school bus, or whatever), start playing, and let the kids loose (not necessarily in that order) . The standing order was to report in for meals and be sure to show up when it was time to go home.

This laissez-faire approach was probably partly the result of the way we boomers were raised. Our parents didn't take the "hands on" approach to our lives that seems to be the norm today. They dragged out of bed, fed us, and made sure we got to school. They dragged us to church. Occasionally they forced us to take piano/violin/whatever lessons. But often that was about it. Most of the rest of the time we were left to our own devices. We ganged up, hung out, made up our own games, and skinned our knees with a minimum of adult supervision or involvement.

(Incidentaly, to us boomers, it is not clear to us that the long term results of such an approach are bad, but that's another discussion.)

Anyway
But it was also partly the result of the way we conceptualized festivals. It was not our intention that festivals be microcosms of the real world (even if they turned out to be so). We perceived of them as alternatives. A festival wasn't supposed to be all things to all people and age groups. It wasn't supposed to be a cheap bucolic substitute for DisneyUniverse. It was supposed to be as unlike the real world of the almighty dollar as possible.

Also, letting the kids hang out and do what kids normally while we did our own music thing was part of our general approach to life. Let a hundred flowers bloom, man. It was also part of a Rousseau-ian view of the world that was popular long ago and far away in one part of the 20th century.

Finally, this approach was partly due to economics. I was once a member of the board of directors of a group that produced an annual old time music festival (now defunct). Each year we would begin planning the next festival with two key questions. How much had we lost on the last festival? How much could we afford to lose on the next festival? If we couldn't get performers to do kid oriented stuff for free, it was a luxury we couldn't afford. And we did think of it as a luxury rather than a necessity (see preceding).

Anyway, sometime during the last decade things started changing at old time festivals. By now we were all driving big SUVs and camping in huge state of the art tent cities using gear that guaranteed survival in the cold of the Antarctic or the heat of the Gobi desert. We were playing custom-made instruments. Our kids weren't kids anymore. They were teenagers (the horror). We started bemoaning the fact it looked like old time music would die with our generation. The average age of festival goers slowly but inexorably increased and we didn't seem to be attracting young people. Our kids were piercing body parts we had never thought it was possible to pierce, much less desirable. They were listening to "music" that wasn't music and made no sense (Sound familir?). They weren't going to our festivals anymore because it was like so uncool.

But recent events suggest that our laissez-faire attitude might have worked in spite of us. At least as far as American old time music is concerned, the tidal wave has hit. Some of our kids must've been listening to the music while our backs were turned. Apparently some of them liked what they heard. Clifftop WV, for example, is now awash in extremely talented extremely young musicians who are light years ahead of where we were at that age.

First point If your favorite festival is being run by boomers, and things are not exactly to your liking, perhaps it is because their ideas about festivals (and kids) are significantly different from yours. It's a point I made in great detail a letter to Rod Stradling's Musical Traditions site.

Second point While kid-focused activities at festivals are a great idea for many reasons, they do not seem to be "necessary" for the survival of the music itself.

Third point If kids are going to "turn on" to the MUSIC it won't be because of Chuckles the Juggler or certified, standardized, sanitized, day care or face painting or an inflatable bouncing room (whatever they are called). It will be because they have the chance to come face to face with the "real thing" and they are touched by it (even if they don't realize it at the time).

My adult daughter, who five years did not want to be in the same room as an old time musician, is now a crackerjack fiddler. When asked what happened (went wrong?) she explains that she came back because she remembers how much fun the festivals were (even sans kid-stuff) and how many nice, intersting, cool "old guys" (and gals) she met.