[1] In 1957, at 110 MacDougal Street in New York City's Greenwich Village, he opened the Folklore Center, a store for books and records and everything related to folk music.

It became a focal point for the American folk music scene of the time, a place where one could find such limited circulation publications as Caravan and Gardyloo, both edited and published by Lee Hoffman.

Bob Dylan relates in his memoirs, Chronicles, how he spent time at the Center, where Young allowed him to sit in the backroom of the store, listening to folk music records and reading books.

He famously led a march in 1961, which became known as “the beatnik riot” in protest at a ban on the public performance of music in Greenwich Village’s Washington Square Park.

After developing an interest in Swedish folk music at a festival, Young closed his New York store in 1973 and moved to Stockholm where he opened the Folklore Centrum at Roslagsgatan in Vasastan.

In 1986 he relocated the store to Wollmar Yxkullsgatan 2 in Södermalm where he remained till the end of 2018 when he retired from a regular series of folk music concerts spanning decades.

The concerts featured prominent traditional Swedish folk musicians, enthusiasts from Stockholm who played music from other places, and international artists from all over the world.

[citation needed] Young's research and documentation of Cambodia's history from the 1960s onwards was donated in 2001 to the "Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies" at Lund University (the HT libraries).