Pirandello wrote:

There's a danger in over-intellectualising music and tearing it apart in the cause of 'research'.

Many people deconstruct musical performances in order to give themselves a new set of tools to bring to their own performances. This often enriches the experience for all of us who listen to these performances. While I agree that there is a lot of academic clap trap around, one has to be careful not to throw babies out with bathwater.

These were simple tunes, simply sung and treating them like the Dead Sea Scrolls does them a disservice and ignores their fundamental purpose.

Sorry but...... this is the phrase that makes me really cringe. Folk music all over the world is often but not always based on simple themes but invariably it takes a huge amount of effort and sometimes lifetimes of experience to bring the subtle techniques to bear. Nobody can just walk up and replicate a Joseph Taylor performance. Chris Coe has spent hours teasing out the little techniques that he used and helping students bring those techniques into their singing toolkit. Listen to a classical violin player attempting a 'simple' folk dance tune and you soon realise how far away they are from playing it in any way that suits its 'fundamental purpose'.

We've lost hundreds of techniques in the past decades/centuries. Some people are interested in reclaiming them and using them again.