Some years ago I conducted a selective review of the contemporary folk industry and media from a popular music perspective as part of my doctoral thesis. I concluded that historiographical pressures concerning what folk music actually was and how (or, indeed, whether) it should be marketed had acted in such a way as to minimise economic and cultural progress and positively encourage an inefficient, albeit dedicated, distribution network of information and music. I further suggested that this happened to such an extent that some folk music lovers who entered the ‘industry’ and attempted to market the music were subject to over-sensitivity and socio-political (and thus generic) pressures and judgements. They had allowed themselves to be deflected from the pursuit of profit by continuing to perceive an opposition between heritage (the natural) and enterprise (the massproduced); this dichotomy remained central to a continual struggle for meaning.

Although I concluded my discussion of this problem by suggesting that certain sections of the folk music industry and media were beginning to face the challenge of commerce, my monitoring of both areas in the intervening years has revealed no substantial progress away from the margins of popular music production. My conviction is that the music of the folk ‘movement’ (if it may still be described as such) remains largely hidden from, and consequently unheard by, the vast majority of the general public. Moreover, despite the efforts of such singers as Billy Bragg, and certain progressive elements within the folk music industry (the Internet-based magazine Musical Traditions, for example) to raise the profile of the genre in the United Kingdom, it seems to me that what little is revealed of folk music participation remains tarnished by the revival's own countenance. After an interval of over four years I cannot but ask whether the folk revival has moved into an irretrievable period of decay – or whether it is merely going through the transitional pains of adjustment to the vagaries of postmodernity in popular music production and reception.