I regard the playing of music as a sharing experience. I'm not enough of a virtuoso to believe that anyone would want to listen to me play without liking the song. I tend to introduce songs on the basis that I'm going to play something I really enjoy and want to share it with the audience. This tends to go down well, and I've got away with everything from straight trad. in acoustic "rock" nights to acoustic rock songs in trad folk clubs. I tend not to let on if there's a song of my own in there, but it will fit in with what I'm playing. One of mine has been taken and is being spread around, interestingly, as a traditional song.

I play a lot for morris, mostly concertina, but I made the effort to learn to play most of the original instruments the tunes were collected on (pipe and tabor, fiddle etc.). This gives me a feel for the distinctive characteristics of the instrument and the way it affects how you play the tune. I've looked at Sharp's notations for the tunes and how those distinctive characteristics are evident, and how often the musician played the same tune more than once and it was different each time Sharp notated it.

There are also the "morris police" who will criticise you for not playing the exact version from the Black Book (in some cases Lionel Bacon applied his own licence and that is not the tune as Sharp collected it!), just as they will criticise the dancing for tiny departures from their accepted version of the norm. I have even had a man stand in front of me and tell me I'm playing the wrong version of the tune, while the dance was going on! He was most unamused when I told him his own instrument (melodeon) is untraditional and that, surely, all the Adderbury tunes were collected in F so why are you playing them in G?

I believe we cannot preserve traditions in music or dance by pickling them. The music must be given a chance to evolve and we must all accept that some of the resulting evolutions may not conform to our own tastes and ideals. There are plenty of those who are living in the past and trying to perpetuate the style of folk music and folk club that existed in their own heyday. There are also those who, given one book or one world view, cannot accept that other world views should be allowed to exist.