what happens then is the frailty of the human cerebelum and Mondegreens.

I refuse to accept that some of the most perfect poetic literature ever produced is the result of frailty and randomness. This is an insult to the mastery of the song-makers to whom we owe everything. Yes - there is frailty, and there are Mondegreens, but there is, above all, a tradition of purposeful creative genius, adaptation, transfiguration, inventiveness and reductive refinement which is all but denied by The Revival.

Unless that is we are to go back to that BLOODY HORSE of Satchmo's or Broonzy's or whoever the smartarse was who thought he'd said something profound when all he has said was bollox... 'a DREARY axiom' as Bert Lloyd called it.

A far more dreary axiom, IMHO, is the 1954 Definition. However so silent, The Bloody Horse is at least still playful and frisky. Not bollocks, especially as all music can, in truth, be seen as Traditional Music, even using the dusty regulations of the 1954. Again I quote the aims of The International Council for Traditional Music (formerly the International Folk Music Council who gave us the 1954 Definition in the first place): to further the study, practice, documentation, preservation and dissemination of traditional music, including folk, popular, classical and urban music, and dance of all countries.