I get rather bored with being told that these discussions are 'unnecessary' and 'boring' and 'pedantic' - if people are not interested in the subject, fair enough, go and discuss something else.
It is often my experience that those who make such claims are usually the ones to whom definitions are extremely important - try telling one of them that they are 'not' a traditional singer - and stand back and watch them throw their toys out of the pram! Categorising your singers is about as 'pedantic' as putting the word 'mushroom' on a tin of soup.
Personally, my involvement in traditional singing requires that I have a reasonably clear picture of what is 'revival and 'traditional' (and everything that comes in between). My singing a traditional song no more makes me a 'traditional singer' than my singing Nessun Dorma in the bath makes me an opera singer. For me, the terms we use to describe the singers are efforts to define where they stand in relation to the living oral tradition (that once was - and is no more!)
Of the singers we met and recorded, some were 'traditional' (ie: had been around when the singing tradition, within the defined communities we were working in, was still alive and kicking (Walter Pardon, Tom Lenihan, Mary Delaney, Mikeen McCarthy et al) - others were not. Some of these latter had learned their songs from traditional singers, but had not been around when the songs were still in use, and in some cases had never sung the songs publicly, but rather, had remembered them. It is these we need the descriptive terms for if we are going to discuss the tradition and everything it encompasses.
MacColl used, (and coined, I think) the term 'song carrier' for his series of 10 programmes of that name (still the best ever done on traditional singing in these islands IMO). In doing so he upset a number of people, but, as far as I'm concerned, it's a good, catch-all term for somebody who didn't come to a traditional repertoire via the revival or through those bloody 'singing lessons' at school. 'Source singer' or 'tradition bearer' works just as well I suppose, though the latter is possibly more useful to include music, dancing, customs, lore and stories.
Mary H:
All collectors make, and have always made judgements of one sort or another - they'd be daft not to. They set out to collect what they believe to be 'folk-songs' and in order not to come home with 20 versions of 'Yellow Submarine', they apply their definition to their work - most of the time, in my view, they have made a pretty reasonable stab at it. Sharp, Baring-Gould and all the others of that generation are to be congratulated for collecting songs they didn't approve of (even if, for one reason or another they didn't publish them).
In the end it all comes down to a personal perception of the tradition, and also the time, opportunity and budget you have at your disposal - let's face it, if you were a part-time collector faced with having to make a choice, what would you rather come home with; a version of Lord Gregory or ten of 'The Miner's Dream of Home'?
A good 'folk song collector' records as much as he or she is able to, given the restrictions they are working under. If they are social or musical historians or ethnomusicologists, that's a totally different ball game.
Cap'n,
You still have a very superficial and inaccurate concept of what collecting is about.
The best collectors I know of; Bruce Jackson, The Lomaxs, Sandy Ives, Hamish Henderson, Ken Goldstein, Parker and MacColl, recorded far more than 'good versions of songs'. As well as doing just that, they provided us with information that gave us an insight into our oral tradition - priceless as far as I'm concerned.
Your comparison between recording 'revival' and 'traditional' singers because (in your opinion) the former may be 'better' singers with 'better' songs is really not what it is all about. Comparisons between the technical abilities of an octogenarian source singer and revival singers with all their bits in good working order totally misses the point, and is bloody unfair to boot! Anyway, as good as a revival singer is, I have yet to hear one who brings anything nearly as 'good' and 'important' as the contribution made (to my enjoyment and understanding at least), by Phil Tanner, Sam Larner or Mary Ann Carolan, as far past their sell-by date as these might have been.
Jim Carroll