I'm fairly new to this academic-type discussion, really. I come from a background, like your harmonica player, Larry, where isolated singers gathered and sang much of the day and never knew or cared where the songs came from - Girl Scout camps of the 50s and early 60s. I can't speak about what happens there now. The songs were sung for the singing. After reading here a few years, I guess some of them were hundreds of years old (Rise Up Oh Flame, Rolling Home), some were obviously composed about particular events (Girl Scout belting out a version of The Ship Titanic) and some were never heard anywhere else and may have been written by someone on staff at that particular time and place. I've seen songbooks, so there were collectors (and disseminators) around at that time. Is anyone collecting now? I'd love to hear what camp kids are singing now.

I'f you're really interested in what makes "Traditional Music," why not set up a booth like the StoryCorps project asking for people to share songs they haven't heard elsewhere? At the least, it'd give the academics some new material to argue over.