Some of what we are talking about is financial, public performance or
recording; some is proprietary feeling in any circumstance. I'm only talking about the latter.
In that circumstance, I'm often a thief, though I am developing more tact as I get older; that and better performance skills.
At the same time I will honor someone else's right to claim a song, modern or traditional, at a specific venue. If I love it, I'll learn it and sing it elsewhere, and sometimes, especially after a pint or two, I'll sing a quiet harmony to parts of it while they're doing it. A glare will shut me up, I hope, though I am sure there have been times when I was oblivious.
Any of my friends who are reading this; let me apologize here for any song you did that I stepped on. I am working on this.
Some places I sing, individuals own songs, and no one else does them. (I have the idea that this is more of a UK than a USA tradition; is that right?) Some places, the first person to get to a song that evening is the one who does it. Some places everyone who knows it leaps in after the first few words; some places people only sing on the chorus; some places it doesn't matter if you know it when you sing or play along.
In any gathering, there are always singers/performers with more and finer sensibilities; and those with fewer. It's amazing we ever get along with each other at all.
And then I am song collector. I find underappreciated songs, mostly modern, write them out and publish them, always with the writer's permission.
I like the idea of keeping these songs as sheet music templates, because then whoever learns them is making the song their own, rather than learning someone else's version.
I usually enjoy hearing others do songs I've started or collected. It warms the cockles of my heart to know the songs are getting disseminated, perpetuated; that other people also love them and want to pass them along.
And last, there is a song I have popularized locally -- my interpretation of the Battlefield Band's "Last Trip Home" -- that Dave and Annie sing, having learned it from me, and I have never heard it because it's "my" song and they won't sing it around me. I sure hope someone tapes it and sends it to me sometime, because I'd love to hear how they do it.
Blessings,
Barbara