Ron, you make my point, but I don't think you meant to. I think the confusion comes from not differentiating between "the tradition" and 'TRADITIONAL' music. I am a complete advocate of carrying on the tradition, and my delivery, most of the time, is a traditional styled delivery. But the thread is about 'TRADITIONAL' Folk Music. Look carefully at the title.   This is why these threads always descend into chaos. Folks don't make the appropriate distinctions. Dick's original songs can never be considered 'TRADITIONAL' Folk Music, although he sings and writes in the tradition. Given the state of information gathering, cataloguing, and records keeping, we will always know where it came from, we will always know the context it was written in. Another example would be the music/poetry of Robert Burns. It isn't traditional, but traditional singers perform it. But the songs collected from folks like Bess Cronin and Jeannie Robertson, passed down through the generations, author unknown, and reflective of the times they were written in, can be said to be 'TRADITIONAL' folk music. The Dublin and Belfast street songs, author unknown, sung by the children or by someone like Frank Harte, are 'TRADITIONAL' folk songs. They are finite, and as we evolve, they are quantifiable.

Mick