"The double glazing fitters and check-out girls probably do have their own workplace folklore, family stories and oral history, WLD, but do they (any more than accountants and IT specialists) have songs - meaning verses and choruses, that they can sing without a cue card? That's why Jim Carroll has spent so much time with the travellers - their communities carried on singing songs after many others had stopped."

I'm sure the check-out girls do sing, that is, if the manager won't fire them for it, but they'll probably be discounted for singing songs they learned off the radio, or from karaoke at parties and family events.

Anyway, I know from experience that here in Israel people do sing at work, at school, for fun, etc.

Are the people waiting for their flight in the Ben-Gurion airport lounge singing and playing guitar not folk?

Are the schoolkids who sing the same three or four songs (all recorded ones too) every year on the schooltrip, the same songs their older siblings and friends sing, not folk?

What about those 20-something year olds who throw a party on the beach and sing by the bonfire, not folk?

Is learning from a record significantly different in principle to learning from a braodside? The only reason people didn't is because the technology wasn't around.