Since when does the middle class corner the intellegance market & the right to apprecate traditional music when traditionally it's origins are of the poor & working classes? Maybe it's them that can afford to seek it out while the others are still to busy surviving in it.

The factory is pretty much dismanteled in most places by modern technology. Here in the US the last hold outs were on the railroads (hoboing & track work), fishing along the alantic coast & prisons in the soutern states (the last 2 were alive up untill the mid 60's) & maybe there's still a bit survivin in the mountains but I doubt it, tecknology has arrived even into the hollars & back hills. Is there truly a liviing fishing community tradition where within they're singing the "Shoals of Herring" or "3 Score & 10" (which came out of a traditional community even though we know who wrote it, then again it wasn't sung) or is it just a matter of a bunch of modern fisherpeople that like singing about something they know about & is close to their hearts & occupations but does that mean there's an existing community tradition of singing? I think not. Even in the West Indies the fishing communities have gone higher tech & no longer need the aid of song to row by. So where are these live traditions still living. Sure there are a few folks that within these trades & occupations write & sing but where is the community as a whole? For without the community there is no more a living tradition.
2 ironworker drinking in a local bar does not make up a tradition nor do they form a community nor does it give them any more insite into what's exceptable & what's not. I worked construction (roofing) all my life, my local (#33 Boston) was originally made up mosty of members of my community (Mission Hill area of Roxbury) including my uncles who were charter members & many of the older guys came from very close by. I sing & have even written songs of & about the trades but that doesn't make me a traditional singer or writer (if ever there was such a thing) & it doesn't make my songs or the songs I sing any more traditional & it never will unless they & I came out of a communitiy that traditionally used songs as a means for self expression, self enjoyment or some other form of self involvment but mosty the only thing heard was the radio. As I said above George Herbert came from a traditional community, he was a sailor that used song for work & enjoyment. Most of us are revival singers but at the end of the day George only cared that some one would contiue singing his songs after he died & because I sing them doesn't mean I'm a traditional singer either it only means that I'm passing on what was once a song that came out of a tradition.
Dylan & MacColl's songs are not from a traditional community but about a tradition & they happen to be influenced by that community but they were not part of it even though that community may have picked up their songs. Is it worthy of a collector, I don't know that's up to the collector & those that will later veiw their collections. Does that include Woody, I guess some would say so & some not, I'd say he came from a community but who gives a shit what I think. Those communities are today mostly gone & so is the factory that grinded out their music.

Barry