American singer songwriters may not sing in your tradition, but they are operating in their tradition. Or their view of what tradition is.

Tradition is a funny word. Back in the 60's, I was at Leighton Park School in Reading for about 15 months, and we had this American kid doing a sort of year's scholarship.

He said the thing about this school is - you have no traditions....not like we had in my school back in America.

we all said, but why would we have any traditions - our school only started up at the start of the 20th century.

He said, well - that's about thirty years older than my school back in Arizona, we've got all these traditions that we hand on.

I think Americans must have a lot more literal meaning of traditional than we do - it is what is actually handed on. Whereas in England, 'traditional music' has to actually have ersatz cobwebs hanging off it.