Jim-
I think the ground has shifted a little since we began this discussion, or maybe I didn't make myself clear, sorry. I don't think there's any reasonable grounds for dispute about what is or is not traditional material. Like you, I prefer traditional music and song and get dispirited when there is too much pop-style singer-songwriter stuff, blues etc presented as "folk". (And like you I've got A L Lloyd's book on my shelf along with quite a few others).

What I thought was "narrow" was not your view of the material itself; what I was querying was your assertion that the singers and musicians who now make and value traditional music are no longer part of the tradition - that's what seemed narrow to me. I see the modern process as a tradition that uses different means of transmission in addition to the old ones, and takes place in different social settings, but as a traditional process nevertheless. It's quite distinct from what happens in the wider popular music scene or the classical world, and something very special.

Yes, of course it's worth trying to change the situation - we need, for a start, to try resist the pressure towards over-orchestrated, over-amplified music that the audience listens to passively. I've been thinking about this and I'm concluding that the "band" phenomenon has a lot to answer for. You know the pattern: singer, let's call him/her XY, has reasonable success and gets noticed for good-quality singing and material, perhaps with a bit of guitar, perhaps no accompaniment. Next thing you know they've formed the "XY Band" and there's a fiddle and a bass player and maybe a squeezebox and some drums, and the songs are lost in a wall of sound - probably quite well played and put together, but the song and the singer have become just part of a much larger sound. I don't think this does any favours for the tradition, and I don't see it as a traditional means of making music.

There are, on the other hand, lots of singers and musicians who do care about finding the right way to treat traditional material, and who try to develop it and share it in the community, but I don't think it's helpful to tell them they're simply too late now to ever be a part of a living tradition. If we tell them that "the tradition" is dead, it's hardly going to encourage anyone to care much about what they do with the songs - they might as well just turn them all into pop songs with a noisy band, and intersperse them with music-hall and Beatles numbers.

Those who do care about traditional song and music need all the encouragment they can get. We need to promote and reward more participative and thoughtful engagement with the music, and encourage people to respect for where the music came from as well as where it's going to. That, in my view, would be a fitting way of carrying on the tradition, and I've met plenty of others who feel the same.

Best wishes,
Marje