If you use phrases like "In the tradition" or "In the oral tradition" please define it in some way, be it geographically, ethnically, or culturally . Or something. There is no single "tradition"., there are lots of them, in lots of places, unless they've disappeared.

For instance, here is a new website that offers recordings from a tradition that I am very excited about: Paul Gifford's Collection of Old Time Music from Michigan and the Great Lakes .

I am excited about it because I am from Michigan (though I seldom admit it unless I have been drinking) and he managed to record music from a tradition that I remember from my childhood, before it disappeared(the music, though my childhood seems now to be gone, too).

The thing is, it disappeared so completely, that I'd forgotten that it was ever there. And when it was there, I didn't recognize it for what it was, and, at least by reputation, I am a "folkie".

Paul is not an ethnomusicologist or an academic, he's just a guy who was really interested in what was out there, so he wasn't looking for "ballads", or such things--the result is he has a collection of folk music that shows us how diverse the sources for "folk music" really are--