Cap'n
You are judged because you are - and have chosen to be- a performer, just as somebody who chooses to paint, write books, poetry or plays, act - whatever, has chosen to do what they do. All of these are judged, hopefully by people who know what they are talking about. If you are not happy about having your performance assessed, stay at home and sing in the bath!
In the time we have been collecting from field singers, I can recall very, very few of them who have regarded themselves as performers, but rather, as people who have remembered songs from an earlier period of their lives and are happy to pass them on to us. In virtually all cases, they have not sung, certainly not in public, for many, many years, and it would be totally unfair (apart from the potential damage it would have done to the task of persuading them to pass on their songs) to apply the same criteria as you would to a younger, healthier, and much more practiced and confident singer. Any judgment of their singing can only come from their peers and from within their own communities. I've seen up close (and not so long ago) the damage that can be inflicted on our access to the tradition by the arrogant and insensitive behaviour of some career folkies (and folkie-'academics') who have ridden rough-shod over the feelings of our traditional singers.
It is worth remembering Cap'n, now that you seem to have come round to the idea that you are not a traditional singer (no criticism - just an assessment of where you stand) that you, like the rest of us, have what we have, because of the generosity of the Walter Pardons, Sam Larners, Phil Tanners et al. As far as I'm concerned, that privilege carries with it a responsibility towards what we have been given, so that in the future others can get the same pleasure from the songs and music as we have. The 'thanks for the songs; by the way, your singing was crap' technique, far from being helpful, is, and always has been destructive. To say the least, it is extremely ungracious!
Despite the insistence of some people that we still have a living tradition and that some of the contributors to this, and other threads, are part of it, nobody has come up with a half-decent definition to substantiate these claims. A week ago, on the 'what is folk music?' thread, Richard Bridge gave an excellent summary of what goes into the making of 'folk' or 'traditional' songs, one I am happy to file and use whenever the need arises.
For me, the tradition, far from being on-going; is dead; what we are left with are the echoes of that tradition. I watched the extremely rapid demise of the singing tradition among Irish Travellers in the mid-seventies, when they acquired portable televisions.
Modern technology, canned entertainment and the fact that, rather than being active participants, most people are now passive recipients of our entertainment and culture; all these and other factors have put paid to a living tradition representing people and communities in general. Copyright laws have ascertained that individuals rather than communities 'own' newly written songs - and even songs like 'Scarborough Fair' and 'The Maid and The Palmer' which have been doing the rounds for centuries. If Comhaltas and the Irish Musical Rights Society over here have their wicked way, we'll soon be paying royalties for the privilege of singing and playing Irish traditional songs and music.
Some time ago somebody asked the question 'How do we honour the tradition?' As far as I'm concerned, we do so by recognising where we stand in relation to tradition, by acknowledging the debt we owe to those who have given us the songs, stories and tunes and by realising the responsibility that comes with that gift. This does not mean that we put what we have been given in a specimen jar and lock it away in a safe place. There are no 'rules' on how the songs and music should be performed (as much as people who use terms like 'finger-in-ear, 'folk police' and 'antiquarian' would wish to impose their particular take on the subject on us). Personally, I have got a great deal of pleasure from listening to the 'cowshit music' of Vaughan-Williams, Delius, Butterworth, Grainger, Bartok, and many others who have taken traditional music and turned it into something else.
If we make radical changes to traditional music, at least let us acknowledge that it is a self-conscious act on the part of us as individuals, and not the process of an on-going tradition.
Jim Carroll