Sounds remarkably like the movie "The Songcatcher".

Wasn't that supposed to be a fictionalized version of vaguely real life?\

If you haven't seen it Guest Anon, (why the funny name?) it's about a female musicologist who goes down south and finds some of the ballads in question at that time when they are unknown to folklorists, then her better known male colleague undertakes to take credit for the discovery....

W-O