To suggest that the term "folk process" somehow denies this is a complete reversal of the truth.

All music relies on such processes, Howard - they are not unique to folk; to call it a folk process implies that it is somehow unique to Folk Music and creates the impression of collective anonymity that over shadows a lot of thinking in the various stages of a revival which, in terms of culture and social-class, operates at a very significant remove from that of The Tradition. This impression is further enforced by the language of the 1954 Definition which speaks mostly of community, with scant regard for individual creativity which is surely just as essential to Traditional Folk Song as it is to any music. Thus Folk Music is, in effect, wished into existence by the bourgeoisie dreaming of a bucolic idyll in which these grubby rustics can't possibly be individually creative, so it simply must be collective, so let us away on our bicycles and plunder at will before the songs are lost to posterity because what do they care about it, they who can't even understand or appreciate the value of their own culture! It is that very purposeful condescension that underwrites The Revival and its attendant attitudes, attitudes which persist to this day which I feel need redressing somehow.

Raking around in a junk shop we might pick up an old rusty bill-hook circa 1860; we know from medieval MS illuminations that such tools have remain unchanged for centuries, likewise the craft of hedge-laying and such that they were used for, and yet do we see the bill-hook in terms of that broader cultural and social continuity or do we see it as a unique manifestation of the art of the equally unique blacksmith who forged it? No names, alas, but a very evident individual mastery which is, alas, all too easy to overlook in the rush to see everything in terms of process and collectivity which is, as I say, in being common to all art is not unique to folk.

Of course some were passive carriers, which isn't what we're talking about here - we're talking of those who were active.

Quite a number of traditional Folk singers particularly Harry Cox,very occassionally made up their own words and tunes of a character quite in distinguishable from the genuine traditional songs.

See? Cox knew his onions! A true master!