If you leave something alone for long enough it will soon become forgotten.(This applies to just about anything and everything.)Forgotten does not mean dying.
                              I am totally convinced that at some time in our future we will be able to ressurect even the dinosaur via dna.The bottom line is nothing dies.
                                  Now to my point.Up until four years ago I was chair of governors at our local primary school. As part of my duties I took it upon myself to run a music workshop. I scoured the carboot sales looking for instruments. When I had found enough I sent fliers round the school."If you would like your child to learn a musical instrument and purchase one at amore than reasonable price then contact the headmaster".
                            I started the children off with basic two chord folk songs.Within a matter of weeks we had a school band.
(The headmaster made the mistake of announcing them on one particular assembly as the school orchestra.)This was great for him to be able to say he had an orchestra, but the kids hated it.The very next day I got the children together and said that we would be holding a talent competition.The rule was that the only people to vote were those that took part.
         The first prize was that they got to choose the name of the band.The headmaster lost his orchestra ,and the childre ended up with a school band called "SQUEAK".
                            They say that it is sport in school that teaches a child to become part of a team, my reply to this is "rubbish".On the day of the talent show I told the children to organise themselves into solo acts or groups.It was absolutely magic for me to see an eleven year old boy,along with his guitar choose an eight year old girl with her recorder to partner him.
                                                    There was twenty eight primary school children with anything up to a four year age gap picking and choosing the opposite sex, younger and older.
                                                       This is what team work is all about.They made the rules ,they organised themselves and I reaped the rewards.I had organised and ran a folk session twice a week for two years for primary aged children.
                                              It sadly came to an end when I moved home, but I can live off memories like that.
                                                             The headmaster managed to take the glory for my efforts (But that dont matter),He entered my children in a competition run by the Guardian newspaper.He totally undermined them, he paired them off, he told them what to play and he had to stand in front of them waving his hands as though he knew what he was doing.They came second.
                                                          I planted the seed in in them so that they could grow on their own.(Yes I am blowing my own trumpet but I saw what they had become, another generation of folkies).
                      I go out now as a singer/musician but I will never walk off stage and get that same buzz that I got from watching those children walk on.
                      Folk music could not die.It only takes one person to infect a nation.