I sing mainly traditional English songs and play guitar. Sometimes I go out with a friend who plays flute and pan-pipes.

We're touting ourselves around getting the odd gig here and there and meanwhile having a lot of fun playing floorspots and singarounds. However, I had an odd conversation last week.

We'd done a spot at a club and after the organiser thanked us gave him our card and suggested that he book us.

His reply was that, although he liked us, his club existed for the promotion of traditional English music and music that was "derived" from it – Scottish, Irish, Appalachian, etc. (I'd dispute that they're all derived from English music but we'll let that pass.) He wouldn't book us as:

i) Apart from our strictly trad. stuff, we do a song which consist of original words to a trad. tune.

ii) We do another trad. song that we sing to a tune that normally belongs to another song, and

iii) We sing some trad. lyrics to a tune of our own composition.

According to this guy, all that is not in the tradition, so his club cannot support it. He also objected to the pan-pipes as they're not "traditional" instruments. (We only use them on one short instrumental section of one song, where we think they work well.)

I was a bit surprised as I've never come across this attitude before and the audience at the club were very appreciative. Is this sort of attitude common? After all, there are many variations of songs to be found; "John Barleycorn" has several different tunes, and I've heard "Pleasant and Delightful" sung to the tune of another song (can't remember offhand what it was.) At some time someone must have thought "What about inventing a new tune for that?" or "I wonder if those words would go with that tune," and the results have passed into the tradition. And I've heard Pete Coe, to name but one, sing lyrics of his own to a traditional tune; he can't be the only one.

Also, if no-one ever sat down to invent words and tunes in the first place, we wouldn't have a tradition!

What's the feeling about this amongst other Mudcatters? Does preserving the tradition mean never changing anything, or is it OK, provided that when you introduce the songs you explain what you're doing? Or do you feel that anything goes as long as it sounds right?