or, like me, they genuinely enjoyed a good voice singing an E. trad unaccompanied, as nearly everyone did at the Durham Folk Party singaround, where we last met.

And a bloody good sing it was too but hardly in anyway traditional as it is preferential with respect a tradition thus perceived. This is a very recent phenomenon - and despite the general hoary demographic a lot of these singers are quite new even to the revival; they're still-game camper-van second-lifers from non-musical backgrounds and making a canny fist out of it too. But in no way shape or form should this be taken for anything else other than it is, and certainly not as a manifestation of Our Own Good Traditional Cultural Heritage. It's just a bunch of people having a drink and a sing; enjoying themselves through commonality and sharing, which I dare say is traditional, but no more so than karoake or line-dancing or any other community based recreation. The anthropologist would understand this - culture contextualised according to human function and need, as oppose to its random content or else some ghastly ersatz provenance however so contrived or justified.

You have a taste for a good voice singing an E. trad unaccompanied - as indeed do I, but unlike you I do not think this is the proper or indeed the only way to do things, or even the traditional way. As far as I'm concerned, the only traditional way to sing a song is with the human voice; the rest is up to the singer. This is the way it is with Folk Music, or any other sort of music, it's about people doing what's right for them, and others, without having some fecking nerd* telling them what is and is not traditional according to some insane set of regulations. Folk Music isn't traditional; it's an academic construct circa 1903 that has over the last fifty years garnered an army of educated enthusiasts who thrive on the cut and thrust of a cultural pedantry such as you've barely begun to scratch the surface of. It's a rich a bewildering realm to be sure; in fact, it's a fucking ocean out there, fraught with dangers, replete with wonders, seductive with deadly beauty, rich with legend, hearsay and scientific** bafflement of the highest order. But you haven't even made it to the beach yet, WAV - let along the rock pools. In fact, you're still in the toilet block - looking in the pan, wondering where all the piss goes.   

* Nerds are traditional too, but they are as unaware of that tradition as a fish is unaware of the water through which it swims.

** In the current number of Radio Times, Stephen Fry defines sciences as humility in the face of facts, which I think is a good maxim to live by.