everyone I've ever discussed the concept with would regard the singers themselves as absolutely central to it.

I would hope that's true any genre or tradition, but one can't help be but be wary of the subject /object inter-relationship of the collector and the collected, much less the motivations of either, in gaining any sort of true picture. Jim himself despairs that his precious traditions died out once people discovered TV, but doesn't seem to take into account his own impact as a collector on the expectations of his singers. This is elementary anthrolopology. A L Loyd falsified evidence, as did Manacle Cowl; as did Disney by having his cameramen employ sheepdogs to drive lemmings off the cliff to prove that's what lemmings did.

The collected evidence tells us nothing of the sort, merely that the people who made recordings of singers generally favoured the better ones.

Look at any craft or trade and you find little evidence of "People just dabbling for the hell of it" - much less the mastery of the evidence that has come down to us. If the majority of people did just 'dabble' in it then fair enough but they weren't the ones making the songs, any more than a unskilled bodger would have been responsible for the mastery of brickwork even in evidence on our humble Victorian sea-side terrace. The songs are the product of something greater than that. I've no doubt lesser talents sang them too, but that's just in the way of things. I hear my post-man dabbling in snatches of popuar song today, doesn't mean he played any part in its creation. I can sing most of Mekanik Destrictiw Kommandoh but I sure as hell couldn't have wrote it.

not to mention many who still choose to sing within the folk revival - and why not?

Absolutely. I'm strictly a come-all-ye man in practise, but I also recognise that when it comes to serious music making you've got to take a few steps up from that. It's not an elitist thing - it's just doing what you do, which is what we all do.

It was one of the things that always attracted me to folk music in the first place: you didn't need to be a 'master craftsperson' to perform it (though some would argue that folk clubs took this attitude too far).

Me too. But you do have to be a master to make it. I don't think the ballad tradition is evidence of casual dabbling any more than the wood-carvings on medieval misericords, ort the slip-ware of Toft.

Let me quote to you again some apt words from Carrie Grover, writing about her early 20th-century Nova Scotia community in which singing was a part of life. That's right, the account that you dismissed last time around as "mawkish and voyeuristic" (always a good idea to favour your own prejudices over eye-witness testimony, eh?).

If you're going to quote me, at least give me a source so I can see in what context I said it - I can't even remember what thread it was!

"many people tried to sing who could not even carry a tune, or as one old fellow expressed it, 'carried it a ways but dropped it before he got very far'... It was rare to find a really good singer of folk songs..."

See my earlier comment about my post-man - or any amount of casual dabblers today who'll quite happily sing you snatches of a song, or take part quite happikly in a Karoake night, but don't write songs. Dabblers are still there; some even make money out of it.

The point is, the Davie Stewarts and Phil Tanners may well have been the 'master craftspersons' of their day, and we can all think of traditional singers whose style, technique and committment we revere - but they were the tip of the iceberg.

You say iceberg; I say pyramid. See my earlier comment regarding Coltrane. As in any musical community & tradition we will have plenty of dabblers, and very competant musicians, and masters, and all points in between. I can't think of a single one where that wouldn't be the case.

Phil Tanner had six brothers, who all sang. We know little about them, but perhaps they didn't all have Phil's talent for entertaining a pub tap room. Percy Grainger recorded several singers at Brigg, but none was the equal of 'master craftsperson' (and chorister) Joseph Taylor.

Sounds about right.

That's what folk music is when it comes down to it - music for everyone.

That's what ALL music is.

That's not a romantic bourgeois fantasy, just the way it was.

The fantasy is assuming that it's any different elsewhere and fantasing over collectivism as oppose to the creativity of working class musical masters. Seeing the songs as a product of a 'process' rather than the same sort of genius that we find in all music, no matter who might be moved to dabble in it.

Not for nothing was a concert at CSH earlier this year, featuring the Coppers, Will Noble & John Cocking, the Moor Music gang and others, entitled: "It's just what we do!"

And not a single dabbler amongst them! Ask any musician though - Jazz, Classical, Gamelan, Metal - and they'll tell you the same thing; It's just what we do. It's the bottom line of all music. We all sat it. We're what Derek Bailey once called the 'I just play, man! men' - or women - regardless of what style or idiom we happen to play in.