Becky makes very good sense. My own preference would be for "singer" where a generic term is required (though it doesn't fit all situations, and there will be times when "source" or, indeed, "informant", may be pretty much unavoidable), and "noted from" or "recorded from" depending on the circumstances. "Given" is rather a loaded term which might be best avoided (as emerged in another recent discussion, it is horribly misused by performers of folk song these days) except where it is literally the case; and I'm afraid that "shared" really wouldn't work; even in the very different context that Hugh seems to be thinking of, it would probably attract more sniggers than anything else. I do confess to being an over-user of passive constructions; partly through caution, probably, but also because there are times when "I" am irrelevant to the matter in hand.

Hugh does raise an interesting issue, though, as he seems only to envisage situations where folk club performers learn songs from other folk club performers. Admittedly, singers belonging to the continuous tradition are getting relatively thin on the ground, but there is an enormous amount of material in written or recorded form that those now dead have left with us, and it would be a pity if revival singers were to neglect all that in favour of simply taking in each other's laundry, so to speak.

The relative scarcity today of long-standing surviving musical traditions has led to a sizeable body of ethnomusicologists deciding that one's own backyard is now an appropriate field for study; a pub session I participate in has now featured in no less than three such studies. That's more the application of sociological principals to the situation, though; group dynamics and approaches to repertoire and its interpretation. The actual musical material is incidental. What I don't think that anyone past their first undergraduate year would seriously attempt would be to "collect" songs from each other which they may all, in any case, have learned from the same records made by slightly older singers: that would seem rather sterile. Having said that, there is probably room for a detailed study of the mechanisms by which songs are transmitted among revival singers, many of whom may never have met a representative of the older tradition. I don't think I'd fancy doing it, though.