"Our songs and tunes have evolved through interpretation and 'folk memory'" - well, I didn't take that as meaning some ethnically exclusive "Our".

I just read it as meaning the songs that we like to sing, whoever we are, and wherever we got them. (Including the ones we wrote ourselves, because they still grew out of songs we've heard, however "original" we might think they are.)

The way we interpret a song will be coloured by the tradition or traditions which we have inside us, which may bear very little relation to who we are descended from. But insofar as its different from the tradition from which the song comes, we'll change it. That's why people always tend to assume, for example, that so many songs from all over the world are Irish, because they've heard Irish singers singing them, and the sound Irish.

This is drifting away from the thread topic, except insofar as one of the risks, if people just relied on print for their songs, could be the risk of interfering with this kind of change and interchange of traditions.