Evolution, not revolution. Now there's a great one-line that says it all! And no scrump, you didn't miss the point. You approach traditional music in much the same way as more contemporary music in that you find your own voice to sing it. I think the difference in approach is the respect most of us on here feel for the singers and the songs that went before us.

Several years ago, some enterprising person got all the people together who ran folk concert series to encourage them to support each other's programs. I thought that it was a good idea. For those of us who ran coffee houses, that was nothing new. We already attended each other's series regularly and would annonce each other's concerts. There was someone who was running a upscale series in the Center For The Arts, booking young singer-songwriters exclusively. I booked an occasional singer-songwriter who sang with some sense of the tradition, but I'd never even heard of any of the people he booked. It was a real upscale series in a fancy setting. In friendly conversation with him I told him I thought it was great, what he was doing, and that our two series complimented each other nicely. He asked me what I did (I doubt he even noticed) and I told him that I booked mostly traditional music and he said "I HATE traditional folk music!" I could have said, you wouldn't have your series without their being traditional music, but that wouldn't have been true. I'm sure that many of the people he booked knew as little about traditional folk music as he did.

Jerry