It strikes me that a performer on stage and audience "out there" is a very artificial way to sing a folk song. Now don't get me wrong - it's one I heartily approve of - but any kind of folk art is as much context as content. If you take a work song, for example, and perform it in an auditorium or a pub, its meaning changes.

When I sing I recognize that I am a contemporary musician with deep roots in traditional music performing a folk song. Some songs may change each time, and some tend to be quite consistent. Often it's the interaction with the audience that tends to determine the different "feel" of each song. But while I have a deep respect for tradition, I don't tend to worry about whether I am being completely true to it, because I'm singing in a very different context.

If I were to sing a lullaby to my baby (expected any day now!), that would be a folk song sung in a traditional context, even if the song itself is relatively recent. I'm sure I would (will!) sing it differently each time. When I recorded the same lullaby on my new CD (expected any month now), I commented to the mixing engineer that "even though it's a lullaby, I don't actually want people to fall asleep listening to it." That's a public performance context with a different purpose - and it's going to be the same every time you play the CD, and possibly largely the same in live performance.

I'm not sure how much sense all of this makes, but I hope it's helpful to the discussion.

Dan Schatz