Why does all this stuff cause such acrimony?- maybe it's indicitave of a deeper change?
in my early days on the folk scene, humour was an important part of any 'folk' gathering- clubs rather than singarounds in those days. It's all become a lot more serious and self-c0nscious, which IMHO is not a good thing.

Re 'possession' of songs, 30 years ago, I was asked to play my gadget at a Sunday night singing session which had run for many years. These were older people and it was of an earlier kind- mainly older local people & my function was to fill the gaps with a song or a tune. This was in the Sibin pub, near Baltimore in West Cork, in the early 90s.

There were many singers, and it struck me how each one had his or her own songs & no-one would dream of singing someone else's song! The changenowadays is that these folks were NEIGHBOURS, who knew each other and their songs and that has now changed, in Ireland too, the excellent Sligo singers circle has a few locals, but many singers there travel many miles to it.

Re the humour aspect, some the Baltimore singers often sang the same
comic song almost week after week, with the same comic punchline- everybody laughed every time!

In the sixties, at the Marsden Inn club in South Shields, the excellent MC Jim Irvine sang a song & minutes afterwards Frank O'Neill, fine singer & joke teller, a few minutes late, came in the door & sang the same song. Nobody groaned, there was a rising giggle resulting in a hilarious torrent of laughing.
Frank didn't know what was going on- it wasn't a funny song, but slowly realised & concluded by laughing louder than anyone.

   Would it happen like that today or do we take ourselves far too seriously?