Here you go Dick. This is one of the most recent songs we've added to our repertoire. (Guitarists or concertina players, forget it, it's microtonal).

http://sarkilarnotalar.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/duriyemin-gugumleri-kalayli.html

And it's no more foreign to you than it is to a native speaker of Greek, Arabic or Persian, all of which we have in the group. Our last set had 8 songs in 5 languages. Next gig is in 6 weeks. (We're adding a new one tonight, it's in Arabic but I already know the tune well). Off you go.

Ukulele groups (which operate in a similar way) are NOT part of the folk scene, never have been, and the folk scene does not set their ground rules. They mostly do popular music, anything from Irving Berlin to Miley Cyrus. When you've got a group of 20 people all singing and playing together on something somebody suggested last week, how on earth can you expect tham all to have memorized every word and chord? It would sound unlistenably crap if they tried. The nice thing about big ukulele groups is that they do usually get the chords right, even though they're a lot more varied and complex than the 3-chord tricks needed for folk, and the massed effect is great.

Nobody has yet mentioned the obvious downside of only performing stuff you've memorized. For anyone who isn't being paid to do it, the result is usually a pretty small repertoire which will diminish in volume, accuracy and quality with the passing years. And if you're only performing to a local scene (as most amateurs do), the audience will very soon get bored with it; hence the evolution of singarounds into a species of elderly daycare. A touring professional has it much easier, since they don't repeat the same act anything like as often to the same listeners.