Let me be the fly in the ointment. Traditional folk music has never been "preserved" like a butterfly on a mounting board. All it takes is to listen to three or four old "traditional" recordings of the same song to realize that folk musicians have always expressed their own interpretation of a song. That's why there are so many variants to most songs. People who try to sing a particular song exactly as it was recorded (in a book or on record) are humorously copying an "original" version of a traditional song with many other "original" versions. Folk music isn't the poor man's karaoke.

I like Folk-Legacy's perspective on tradition... tradition is alive and well, and CHANGING. It's always been that way. In the 60's, some people who love traditional music (Count me way in) decided that a particular old recording was "The" way to do a song, and it was disrespectful to bring any originality to it. I never felt that way. I still do more traditional music than I do my own "original" material, but then I consider the traditional music I do as being "original" too. Maybe it's why I don't feel that I have to shift gears, switching back and forth from traditional to "original" songs. They're all original in their own way. That doesn't mean that I don't have the greatest respect for the old versions. I rarely change a word in traditional songs, and I honor the chord changes and melody. It's in the rhythm, the phrasing and the personalization of the song that it becomes "original." To me, Lonnie Donegan was a good example of someone who did traditional music in an original way. So did Dave Van Ronk, and Mississippi John Hurt, and Doc Boggs and Reverend Gary Davis.... the list goes on. I don't enjoy copies of art masterworks, and neither do I enjoy an "exact" copy of traditional music. Not that there is one....

Jerry