Hi there, friends,

Thanks to Kevin, Greg, Fay and others for responding to my provocations. And yes, I plead guilty to inconsistency. ("Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself! I am large: I contain multitudes." –Walt Whitman )

But friends, you still haven't answered my question. I asked why we folk-enthusiasts spend SO MUCH of our time and energy arguing, when we might be playing, singing or dancing?   Debate and discussion are healthy activities, and long may they flourish. But the folk community seems to devote a disproportionate amount of time to them – often going over the same old familiar questions again and again.    Why?

Is it because we folkies feel obliged to keep on and on explaining and justifying our activities to an indifferent or hostile majority? Or do we, like other embattled minorities, have a powerful urge to keep re-examining our faith, to make sure it's free from all traces of heresy?   Or is it just that folk music attracts gabby, argumentative people? Present company excepted, of course. :)

And as for the original question - whether all (or most, or too many) folkies are over fifty, and if so, why ?… well, think on this. Influential sections of the media keep trying to brainwash us into believing that young = good and old = bad.   So, many people tend to judge any product by the age-profile of its consumers, rather than by its intrinsic merit. Unfortunately, "folk music", like some other brand labels (Marks and Spencer for example) has acquired a fuddy-duddy,"Mums 'n Dads R us" image.

Some of us old folkies keep on (and on … and on) lamenting this sad state of affairs. Others make increasingly desperate attempts to change it, by rebranding themselves and what they do, in the hope of pulling in young recruits for the cause. It seems to me that there is little point in either of these activities. Collective self-pity achieves nothing except to deepen our depression.   And trying to pretend we're something that we're not, in order to attract people who don't like what we are, seems equally pointless.

A small but very welcome number of youngsters have - despite discouragement from their peer group and the yoof media - found their way into the folk environment recently. This is good news, even though there may not be enough of them to replace those of us who already have one foot in the grave. But if folkies as a species are doomed to follow the path of the dinosaur and the dodo,then let's go out singing, not whinging.

Abandon the inquest, and get on with the wake!


Wassail!