"Individual creativity is the whole of the case; that is, the very particular creativity of the individuals through whom it passes."

No, it isn't. At this point, I almost expect you tell us that "there is no society, only individuals." If you spend a lot time with some rather large folk/traditional collections (Max Hunter, etc.) it becomes very obvious that there are some singers who try to replicate lyrics and melody just as they heard them, some who try to do so and miss the mark, others who sort of adapt what they heard from others (including recordings and radio broadcasts – which can be part of the folk process, in my opinion, and this is a point upon which I diverge from the 1954 definition) to their own style, and, finally, others whose versions seem to be very creative and deliberate re-creations, the work of talented people. ALL are important to the folk process.

"I don't think there is a single example of a definitive finished version of anything . . . . and variation will always exist a every level simply because nothing can ever happen the same way twice."

On this point I have no disagreement with you, but I believe it is a matter of degree. There are hundreds of collected versions of Child #200, Child #84, 'I Die For Love'/'Butcher's Boy', etc. If you have a lot of time on your hands, you can group them variously in terms of lyrical and melodic content; you can identify regional variants; you can trace the spread of those variants (and the people who carried them) through time and space (the north of England/lowland Scotland/Ulster to Appalachia on to the Ozarks and even on to FSA camps in Depression-Era California, etc.) . . . .   Can you describe anything remotely close to this process at work in the variations one can find among recorded versions of a piece of symphony music (for example)?

" . . . I do allow for Traditional Music, though I don't have too much to do with it personally."

Again, I wonder exactly what you are up to with this thread. You have described yourself as a 'traddie' – indeed, at one point you told us that you started this thread to separate the wheat (traditional song) from the chaff (everything else that happens 'in the name of folk) - and now you tell us you don't much to do with Traditional Music?