Pretty sad though, the loss of authenticity. And the resignation of a comment like this. Also the part about how customers should accept it because of the considerations capital has in starting it up.
That is a serious question. What is it?
When I was in Dublin the thing that really surprised me was how every bar.. er... pub had these amazing Irish musicians who sort of picked up various instruments and just went at it. I would identify it as "irish folk music" though if they were belting out lesser known Richard Thompson tunes, I would not know.
Were they paid? Did they carry their instruments with themselves? Who knows.
Now, I consider that authentic. Was it authentic? Do Irish people read this and think "he was stuck in that tourist trap area" or do they think "yup, that's good 'ol homestyle music"?
And can we reproduce that here?
Good question. Probably an accumulation of our experience of a 'third place'. I like family run Italian cafes and restaurants. There are a few in Birmingham, I was in a very nice one in Liverpool a couple of weeks ago, and there are lots (still, just about) in London.
You could probably define a script that would reproduce a typical interior, and you could probably build a reasonable facsimile of a family run Italian cafe in a shopping centre easily enough. But I would not have been eating there for 30 years...
There's a bar in Queens that has a killer session Sunday nights (there are dozens at other bars in NYC throughout the week). It drives me insane but during football season, they cancel the session if the Giants or Jets are on TV. Alas, at least 2x as many people show up for football as for music.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_traditional_music_sessio...
Go elsewhere, you'll hear pick-up country jams, playing the classics. Or hip-hop, or slam poetry, or Irish music, or bebop.
A big part of what makes something like Irish session music, bluegrass, protest folk, bop, blues, etc work is a powerful shared vocabulary. There are songs everyone knows, and musical clichés that experienced performers can follow even if they don't know the specific tune. You like to play, you join the community, you get good, you get respected, and darn it, there's a bunch of people willing to actually listen to you while they drink a beer. For a lot of us, that's the reward.
"I used to think I was an artist. Turns out I'm a beer salesman." -James McMurtry
There are exceptions: New York City has a very high density of people from different countries. It's possible to walk around Flushing NY (part of Queens) and sit down at a completely genuine Chinese restaurant, where you will be given a menu with either a highly questionable English translation or none at all. Everything you will be surrounded with, from the language to the people to the decor, will be Chinese, and it will be a very authentic experience, and I personally love it.
But that can only happen where there's a dense population of Chinese people. It can happen in Flushing, where the population is 71% Asian. But it cannot happen in most of the US, where the local population is mostly homogeneous.
That's why bars like this are in demand.