Snail - the point is that folk music should be a living tradition. If the Copper Family were collecting today, wouldn't they be using modern technology for their sources?

You are looking at the Copper Family from a perspective set in time. The family collected songs for centuries, according to the stories I heard Bob Copper tell.    The point of this discussion was defining source singers.   Are we locked in time were we only consider the music of a distant past?   When the collectors of the early 20th century gathered their songs, weren't the songs part of a living tradition of their source singers?    They were not considered museum pieces at the time of their collection.