In response to Will Fly's interesting remarks
I do wonder about the issue of authenticity, and whether I can really "sing a traditional song as though we were part of the world that it came from".

1) A lot of the songs I learned are songs of the sea, for chanty sings and so on. It's here that I have the biggest sense of "why am I singing this"? I've never really been sailing even for pleasure, much less on a clipper. I know songs about fishing, but I know very little of the reality of fishing. That is not a world I inhabited, nor is it even a world any of my ancestors inhabited. Because I'm from Liverpool, I justify one or two to myself on the grounds that they refer to the place, and therefore have something to do with a sense of place (e.g. Roll, Alabama, Roll is an important reminder of Merseyside's role supporting the Confederacy in the American Civil War), but this isn't necessarily true. The only 'song of the sea' that I can think of as something I learned FROM being in Liverpool, and hearing it song by people I knew (at celebrations etc.) is "The Leaving of Liverpool", which clearly has associations that go well beyond the seafaring life to which the words responded.

2) I do have a big repetoire of songs I learned from family. This, I think, really is a tradition within which I am able to sing and express myself, because I'm passing on stories and songs that my own relatives passed on to me when I was a child. For example, I was sung Coulter's Candy as a lullaby when I was a child; now I sing it to my baby son when he's crying, and it clearly soothes him. The only problem here for me is a geographical one: the songs I'm thinking of here are mostly Scottish, because of having a Scottish father and uncle who sang to me. And so I'm singing songs about Scottish city life even though I'm not from a Scottish city; and to confound the problem, these songs were meant to be sung in an accent that I don't have. So the true songs which reflect the passing on of tradition through the family may, in a way, SOUND fake, even though they're not.

3) On the other hand, there are a number of songs that I've learned from my city of birth (Liverpool) that are not from 'oral tradition' in this kind of way, but definitely do reflect the place in which I grew up in. So here, I think I am singing songs that are part of my world, and I am within their world. But the method by which I learned them wasn't the 'oral tradition' in the strict sense. (An exception here, which I've already raised earlier in this thread, would be football songs which I've learned at the match and in pubs)

4) But there is also a vast swathe of songs that deal with universal issues. Ranging from jealousy to incest to the glories/dangers of drink. Can I sing these songs as though I was part of their world? I don't know. If I sing "The Bitter Withy", for example, I am not part of a cultural setting that is even aware that the willow tree rots from the inside out. However, I was raised Catholic, and I was told apocryphal stories and Jesus' childhood. Moreover, the very English issue of class conflict (Jesus as a poor boy, the rich boys looking donw on him) are meaningful to me and many of the people who've listened to me sing the song. If I sing "Lucy Wan", the reference to a broadsword is an historic anachronism (as it probably was among 19th and early 20th century singers of the song, I guess, although I'm willing to be corrected), but the horror of incest and of murder are still real get reactions from people today... it doesn't go away just because time has moved on (it is probably an immortal taboo). These are songs that I didn't learn strictly from the "oral tradition", but I don't think they're culturally alien to me, because I think the themes they deal with remain relevant.


So, in short, I sing 1) songs that I have no business singing, 2) songs that I learned as a child but that I probably sound silly singing because I have the wrong accent, 3) songs that reflect the place where I grew up, but that I didn't learn as a child, 4) songs that deal with universal themes, but that I didn't learn as a child.

Aside from category 1, I would say that the other 3 categories are 'traditional singing'. But each of them can be contested. Sorry for such a long-winded reflection!