If one holds onto the criterion that recording a song pulls it away from being traditional and away from being folk, then demise is inevitable. If enough people like a song, someone will record it. Eventually what is left are songs that few people like.

I am not very scholarly, so I just want to add my feelings about this subject. The Uncertainty Principle says we cannot measure something without fundamentally altering it at the same time. I believe labels act the same way. So my preference is to duck labels.

But let me talk about the music I love. My guess is that all the songs under traditional and folk started with one person. Part of the process of oral transmission means others add both their ideas and their misunderstandings. This is where media may interfere. They can create the idea of one right or true version.

I used to think that folk music was written for pleasure, perhaps even just the original writer's pleasure and only coincidentally was passed to others. Songs written to impress others were naturally not folk.

But when I think of a song like The Texas Rangers (Come all ye Texas Rangers whereever you may be), if feels like folk. It was probably derived from a Broadside and so was written for money, but passed into an oral tradition.

What I think has happened in the last ten years or so is an increasing amount of recorded music. It is simpler to record and distribute music on a small scale than was ever possible before. This means that music that may have only had oral transmission before can now have media transmission. I believe this makes it unlikely that any song will exist in just the oral tradition for very long if it has redeeming value to others. Someone somewhere will write it down and/or record it. Certainly this is a loss in some sense. I believe the oral tradition allows for a song's rough edges to be sanded down and smoothed out. It is this process that I believe makes traditional and folk music so likeable.

It may be that this sanding process will continue to take place, but will take longer. Just as the original Broadside of Texas Rangers may no longer exist, the CD's and tapes and songbooks will also fade away. This is happening with music on vinyl already.

I believe that good music will continue to be written and sung by others. Some of it will pass into song circles, patios, living rooms, and other places were people gather together to enjoy music. Some of it will adhere to the definition attributed to Michael Cooney (If it takes more than one trip from the car to bring it in, it ain't folk).

I am not worried about the demise of folk music. This digital tradition provides one of many new forums for people to share their love of music. Whether we call it folk or traditional is of less importance to me than that there be music that is accessible to people at a social level that is not shovelled out by some conglomerate who has their own idea of what the people want.

There remains much music that survives simply because people love to hear it. That is what I care deeply about.

Roger from Baltimore