Rusby sings in a Barnsley accent, in a style that she is comfortable with, so you could argue that she is "authentic" to her own style.

I would class myself as a child of the folk revival. I think it is a generational thing in some ways. Whilst I wholeheartedly respect Sam Larner, Bob Cooper etc. etc. it is hard to get my wife (who only has a passing interest in folk music) and the majority of he population interested in anything that isn't accompanied by a guitar.

I love unaccompanied singing but my wife can't really see the "entertainment" in it.

I suppose if you don't feel that you are part of the folk movement (for want of a better term) then the music can seem quirky and strange. I have long debates with my wife that she has been conditioned by decades of lisening to american and american inspired rock and aor. She and a great many people just are not used to unaccompanied singing and so it sounds slightly odd to them.

Where does this leave the folk revival? Well without it, a massive body of song, music and dance would not have been recorded, noted and/or distributed. If you like, the revival spun the plate and kept the whole thing going.

But as Carthy said on a Late Junction around 2003/2004, if you start to put traditional music and song in a box and say "it should always sound like x or y" then it will quickly die and become irrelevant. I feel it has to be rediscovered and reinterpreted every 20 years or so to continue.