Can I bring us back on track. Christian's original question was to do with how songs are transmitted from one person to another. Let me shed a little light on this from my years of collecting from source singers.

I spent many hours in the company of the late Wiggy Smith, singing, drinking and recording his songs. Wiggy was a local gypsy, and couldn't read. Where did Wiggy learn his songs? - well, many orally from friends and family, and others from commercial recordings of such diverse artists as Jimmy Rogers, George Formby and Norman Wisdom. Does that mean that some of his reportoire was more 'traditional' than others? Well, yes, no or maybe. Of the songs that he learnt orally and therefore traditionally from his family, it is probable that somewhere in their history, they (the songs, not the family) were given a leg up by being printed on a broadside, so how different is that from a singer of today learning a song from a book?

Yet Wiggy is rightly regarded as a 'traditional/source' singer, as he was singing independently of the folk scene/revival. The traditional/revival distinction is a very grey area. I know a lot of singers in the folk scene who have learnt folk songs from their families or otherwise outside of the revival.

Another thought - does my time spent with Wiggy make me a 'traditional' singer by association? Well, the answer is no, as there was a certain academic interest in my recording Wiggy, with my conscious knowledge of the totality of the folk scene. If, on the other hand, one of his sons had said 'Dad, I want to learn your songs. Sing them onto this tape.' Then the scene would be different. The son would probably be learning the songs to sing in the family or friends context, not in the folk scene. (Ah but what if his motive was to sing them at the folk club..?)

When I first started collecting, I never used to ask a singer where he/she learnt a song, as I was just happy to get the song down on tape. Now I always ask, and get a variety of replies, ranging from 'I learnt it from my great-grandfather' to 'I learnt the tune from a Vaughan Williams symphony and then found the words in a book'. Many traditional singers have learnt songs in exactly the same way as revival singers, by hearing a song, asking the singer for the words and going away and learn it like that. Scan Tester in Sussex learnt 'The Lakes of Cool Finn' in this way,not by hearing it many times from friends or family.

All this goes to show that oral transmission is a very complex business, very much bound up with context and motivation. WIth today's communications, we can learn songs by fax, answerphone, etc. I'm sure that more and more songs are now being passed on by mobile phone recording. Is that traditional or not? (discuss)

Good luck with the dissertation.

Gwilym (Tradsinger)