Yes - the quality police especially those in folk societies should ease off and responsibly balance the ordinary and for want of a better term virtuoso.

In the folk tradition the autonomy of the participant is key.

if you impose standards you then interfere with adaptation and personalization of performance. Evolution is halted.

the important thing for the participant in the oral or folk tradition is to give them security and space and especially tolerance. in the past up it was the environment of the participant that caused deterioration and "dullness" not the tradition itself. Those who were the last links in the hundreds of year old chain of custody of the songs had been relegated to the lowest possible and economic orders and were oppressed. The turn of the century revival pronounced them dead or irrelevant- "scientific" standards were imposed both for the composite collected song as well as for performance. Later Mccaull championed quality of presentation and exactness of regional style selected for performance-

This was the way virtuoso performance became important as did codification of songs. These things had never ever been so important before. The virtuoso performance class was much less dominant.

The radio interview already cited indicates that nothing has changed. if the folk police are not happy you don't get access to promotion stages recording contracts festivals- one can not even be average or slightly above average.... (even the young performer category at folk awards featured individuals who were already professionalized)

This is simple discrimination and detrimental to the tradition as a whole.

No one has to be good. they have to have songs keep songs and adapt and make songs.

Practice for the folk, oral tradition participant is defined by the participant and no other. If they meet their own standards great if not fine too-

Participants in the oral/folk traditions should be protected, assisted, praised funded and recognized.

This way their ranks will grow and as individuals can only hold so many songs in their heads more songs will then reside in the shared folk inventory. If they are discouraged we will be left with only the "good" and the few and that's not helpful

Conrad