Between August, 1978 and March 1979, Pat and I carried out a series of interviews with Ewan, getting him to talk about his approach to singing rather than his life, which was already well covered.
In an effort to get away from subjects here that have already been answered ad nauseum, perhaps it's worth putting some of the discussion that took place here - one can but try!!
The transcripts were used in a talk Pat and I gave at the first 'Ewan MacColl weekend' in Salford.
Jim Carroll

Ewan was very much opposed to the popular idea that the act of traditional singing was a "natural" one and that the singer really did not have to think about what he or she was doing.

1.   I believe that this notion comes from, it really begins in the Romantic Movement.   It begins with that notion of the rude, unlettered hind with a heart of gold and all the rest of it, you know. Basically today I see it as a very reactionary and very bourgeois point of view. I think it stems from a belief that the working class are incapable of doing anything which demands a high level of expertise and a high level of skill, particularly in the creative field.   
And how is it possible then that this body of music that we call folk song and folk music, traditional song, traditional music, whatever you like to call it, how is it possible that this, which has been made by labourers, seamen and all the rest of it, should have, should demand this level of expertise, should demand this high level of craftsmanship on the part of its performers.   "No", they say, "the songs are simple", and all the rest of it.   And that is nonsense, that is utter nonsense.   
To some extent it's the same idea that the nineteenth century English folk song collectors had about the music itself.   "It's embryonic music", they said, and when they didn't actually describe it as embryonic, that is what they meant when they talked about it being simple, "the simple music of unlettered people".   But unlettered there is used as a pejorative term, as though the ability to read and write is all important. The implication being that if you can read and write, then you are going to be a better singer than if you can't read or write, and we know that's nonsense.
It's this snob thing and it's the snob thing which makes them say "you don't need to work at it, you don't need a high level of craftsmanship to perform this.   
The best of folk music in the world, wherever it comes from, whether it's a Joe Heaney or whether it's that young man singing those Azerbaijani songs, is full of the most extraordinary expertise, full of the most extraordinary physical ideas, vocal ideas I mean, I mean physical in the vocal sense.