Where does this obsession for "orginality" come from? You get it in songs, in literature, even in architecture. Yes, there are circumstances where a break with the past is called for, and for some reason it's possible to have new things which at least feel like they are totally new (they very rarely are in fact).

But most of the time it's a matter of building on the foundations of what people have done before, and very often that means largely aspiring to replicate what people have done before. And people involved in folk music should always be aware of that.