With apologies to Anne for all this trhead creep, but it's all about coyright, ownership and money, so I think it's relvant

Yes: "a distinction between "tradition bearers" and "professionals"

There is much evidence that a lot of tradition bearers were in fact professionals or at least sem pro in times gone by. Many tune players and ballad singers were, along with the travelling actors, broadsheet writers and music hall turns (who gave a lot of trad songs a shot in the arm).

Forgive me if i cut and paste from my own post on fRoots re Flash Company:

"It's often forgotten in the 'folk' world that songs have always had one foot on the stage. Many of the old writers were semi-pros, and many of the old songs were in fact written down and sold around the country - for semi-pro performers to use. Songs were often included in plays and passtimes (many of our best came directly from or via Music Hall and theatre). And all singers only choose to learn a song, from whatever source, because they think - "Ooh; THAT's a good song - that'll get their attention!"

So while many source singers may not have thought of themselves as 'performers' per se, merely social singers, this was as much an accident of history, in terms of the niches where the songs were surviving when they were collected, than any true representation of why they were written, why they first become popular - and most important of all - why they survived.

If we really want to keep the tradition alive we have to go back to what the original writer was trying to achieve. And that's exactly what the best interpreters of traditional song have always done."

And, I should add, we mustn't mind if sometimes the results are not to our personal taste.

By the way, this is a bit of The Imagined Village

What do you think?