Stim, you mention that it takes more time to ask a question than to answer it...particularly related to this thread.

Yet.... looking at this very interesting thread (I'm with you, bettynh, when you say that threads like this keep bringing you back to mudcat).........I realize that I've probably asked the wrong question.

I'm really wanting to understand the 'living tradition' of music and that whole process and how we, the 'common people' put that into practice.

So for me to use terms like 'traditional' and 'folk music'....which are terms studied by musicologists and other academics, and expect people knowledgable in this field to make this 'living tradition' process lucid is probably not realistic.

The closest thing I can find is that Lord Bateman example....and it reminds me of how my father-in-law would take such pride in reciting, so passionately, certain poems like "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner". He grasped it so close to his soul; this was no commercial music (or poetry) industry putting words in his mouth.

And I think there are some similar (but different) processes happening today.   The songs I sang to my son when he was a baby. The songs that are sung in folk clubs, pubs, or legion halls that get people singing along.   No, they're not traditional in the academic sense.   But somehow they come close to people's hearts (if not their souls).

So what I think I need to do is start another thread focusing on what makes a song last. And what recent popular, rock'n roll, country, or so-called 'folk' songs seem to be on their way to becoming songs that will become part of such a singing 'tradition' (using the other definition of tradition, rather than the one embraced by musicologists).

Thanks everybody for your input....and Joe, I'm OK with closing this thread now (unless others want to keep it open).

-Larry