"what happens with the generation that did not grow up experiencing Fred Jordan or Lizzie Higgins or Walter Pardon at first hand. Will they be studying the archive recordings for style"

Sound post from BrianP as usual.

I started out last year basically plundering traditional songs from recordings by revival bands (I never learned to read music as a kid). Later I began to acquire more material by traditional singers. In retrospect I really wish I'd have been able to use archive material from source singers from get go, because the 60's set a certain aesthetic spin on trad. songs which is all it's own, and now I've subliminally absorbed that I've found it harder to shake off than one might suppose. Even so with reference to 'style' I don't think I'll ever sound like - or indeed want to sound like - Lizzie Higgins for example. Although she's a fabulous singer, I'm reluctant to attempt to imitate a voice that simply isn't mine. Plus a lot of those recordings were done when these singers were elderly, they weren't singing at their peak. That link I posted below to Andrew King, I posted because I think his arrangements are very potent and evocative, but he really sounds as though he's imitating someone like A.L. Lloyd much too heavily for my taste. And I don't dig that at all. What's challenging for me right now, is finding my own voice through all of the variables. Maintaining a positive balance between valuing tradition and personal creativity. I reckon everyone who comes to this music - be they an amateur dabbler like me, or a professional musician - is inevitably going to be confronted with the tension posed between these supposed opposite positions we have been discussing here. And I think it will be that very tension, that will keep traditional musics alive and kicking in the future.