When I asked Bert Jansch last year why so many young people had become drawn to his music I had no idea what his answer was going to be.

My own answer to this question was quite simply that notable guitar legends such as Johnny Marr and Jimmy Page were always keen to site his playing as a formative influence on their own styles. The result was countless awkwardly thin obsessive teenage boys working their way back to his music and as a result realizing that it is possible to turn distortion down, unplug and still (with luck) impress a girl or two.

Yet the softly spoken doyen of the acoustic guitar replied simply that young people will always be drawn to folk music, as it doesn’t have a label.

This makes perfect sense in a world where almost everything else does, and may be the reason why the inevitable struggle for identity can often find the start of its resolution among the boxes of faded vinyl that are now, in the most simple rite of passage, passed on from one generation to another.

I think it is this sense of rediscovery, in an increasingly finite world that makes traditional music so exciting. Aside from the few (often slightly dubious) examples of someone who has been brought up in a background untainted by anything other than tradition, the majority of people now work their way back, from a plethora of starting points, to embark on a journey that seems to only ever be exhausted when the desire to explore is.

My own interest in folk music emerged at the same time as our current technological revolution was gathering pace. My first stop, when searching for a song, is always youtube. It doesn’t always yield, but it has introduced me to reams of more material than would ever have been possible in the now obsolete world of cash for recordings. Almost every time I look for a song or artist, I discover a new one. The fact that this service is free does not demean the trade of non-mainstream musicians, it gives them countless hitherto impossible chances to find new listeners and stake out a fan base. The myth that mainstream record companies once had an interest in giving musicians a decent wage is ridiculous. Their actual interest has always lain in the withholding of music from those who tend to have the strongest desire to consume it: the young.

Yet searching for folk music on youtube has its own drawbacks that, while not financial in nature, involve a similar level of sacrifice. I have lost count of the number of times I have looked for a song only to find several hours worth of middle aged men with beards, a mid-life crisis and a vain hope that they might be discovered (by the new fame making machine that is the internet to a certain, tragic demographic). The most remarkable feature of this often forgotten sub-genre is that I have never come across someone who is a) a good performer with some ability to share or b) not entirely uncomfortable under the gaze of their new digital camera. Like so many online phenomena this practice comes with its own rituals, and community. There is nothing more surreal than when people leave comments on these videos like “‘I really liked the bit when you said, ‘you must know it by now, join in!”'.

Perhaps this simply represents part of the underlying charm of folk music: that you can never separate the wheat from the chaff. Also if you are ever feeling particularly bored, and in a slightly cruel mood, just type a well known folk song into youtube, choose the middle-aged man with the best facial hair and the worst camera angle, and enjoy.