Jin Carroll wrote;

Sorry Ron, the community is no longer involved in either the making nor the transmission of the songs (unless you want to re-define the term 'community', that is)

I looked up "community" and found two major general definitions within a dictionary entry.

1. a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage.



2. a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists

Jim, you clearly only accept the first definition as valid for defining "community" in the context of the processing of folk songs.

However, others appear to accept the second definition as also being valid in this context. This seems reasonable to me though I accept that others clearly prefer the narrower view. The second definition does explain some of the differences in perspective about folk songs in this thread and others without having to redefine anything.