"By continuing to sing them we are keeping them out of the museum and because each successive generation has interpreted them in their own way they are anything but fossilised."

Sure, if I read Tolstoy, I'm just reading Tolstoy same as anyone who has ever read Tolstoy. I'm not partaking in a re-enactment of other people long ago who once read Tolstoy. When I'm reading a classic Russian novel, I'm simply reading a novel same as when I sing a traditional folk song, I'm just singing a song.