There's far more informal live music and chances to hear traditional music than there ever was when I was young.

There are two ways that music and singing survives and develops. One is through a process of handing it on, with continuity. And the other is through a cyclical process of death and revival. In urban societies the latter tends maybe to be more of the pattern, and as the world gets urbanised that tends to be truer in the rural places too.

Both processes probably tend to work on an alternating generations basis. But with people living linger, that doesn't actually prervent contuinuity.

Anyway, one way and another the human instinct of making music for ourselves is built into us, and will always break through sooner or later. We shouldn't allow oursleves to get hungup on the idea that fashion is important.