"Jim, I'm not at all sure about this "traditional" vs "revival" singing."
Marge - I am - it's a bad idea
You take your inspiration from wherever you can, whether the singers are or 19 or 90 - I never suggested otherwise (it was somebody else who suggested learning from 45 year olds).
The examples I cited from older singers, I believe, come with a lifetime of experiences and backgrounds and are unlikely to be available elsewhere.
Whoever you take as your guide, I've never been convinced that folk singing can be taught, though I fully accept The Cap'ns suggestion of learning by listening to other singers.
What I would hate to see is a return to the barren days of copying, when virtually every club was populated by Carthy copiers or Bellamy bleaters or Dylan doubles or Moore mimers, or Joanie clones, and when you knew that when three or four singers stood up to sing you were about to hear a Watersons tribute group.
By all means take the best and most useful of whatever other singers have to offer, but please make the end result your own, not a piss-poor imitation of theirs.
No - I don't believe we as revival singers, are part of the the song tradition, merely borrowers from that tradition, and what we do seldom, if ever extends beyond the walls of our individual clubs, festivals, singarounds, whatever.
This is not in any way a criticism, just an assessment of who we are and where we stand in relation to the music we have chose to be involved in.
Guest Russ.
Sorry about the delay in responding to your query - was forced to take a few days beak in beautiful Donegal - tough, but somebody has to do it.
"Define "outside(r)."
Not part of tradition that made, remade and kept alive down the centuries the music we are involved in, merely (the wrong word altogether) borrowers of it. There are, I believe, a whole bunch of reasons why it is important to recognise this, which have been hammered to death ad nauseum, and I have no doubt, will be again.
Jim Carroll