"The Folk Process effectively removes the creativity of the working-class individuals from the equation by regarding them as passive anonymous carriers, as though Folk Song were some sort of disease."

You have not so much denied the existence of the folk process (no capitalization necessary) as you have consistently and repeatedly misrepresented what specialists and amateurs mean by the term. The above quote is only one of many in which you demonstrate you do not understand the term as it is used here and elsewhere.

First of all, the folk process can be empirically confirmed. Composed songs enter tradition are shaped by individual singers and musicians. The collective element refers to the community or communities within which the songs circulate. Folk songs aren't written, they are 'grown' – thousands of broadside ballads, music hall songs, minstrel songs, etc. have been written and forgotten over the past few centuries; only select ones ('Unfortunate Rake'; Child 84; Child 200; 'Jesse James'; 'John Henry', for example) have become folk songs. A song has to be accepted by the community to enter into the tradition and become processed by individual singers. The role of individual singers is crucial in any description of the folk process with which I am familiar. Could you provide a reference to back up your repeated claim that "agenda-driven" folklorists have described singers of folk songs as 'passive carriers'? That, SO'P, is the straw man you keep building up and burning down. No one here had made such an argument; perhaps you could name and cite the 'parasitical' folklorists who have argued such (?).

The magnificent Max Hunter collection which you and I both enjoy and mine for songs, tunes, etc. is an excellent demonstration of the folk process within a geographically bounded community. There are master singers and musicians, others who more or less reproduce what they have heard, and still others whose faulty memory and/or mis-hearing also contribute (in a different sort of way) to the evolution of the music. You have deliberately misrepresented the meaning of the term by insisting that folklorists have wiped out any reference to the first category of singers and entirely privileged the latter. Again, I ask you to tell me when and where a particular folklorist (name, please!) has delineated a particular tradition as evolving in this accidental sort of way (names and places, please!). Also, and I can't believe I have to even mention this, Hunter was a folklorist! You have nothing but bile for his kind, and yet where would you be without the work of him and others? You're like the city-dweller who scorns the farmer while nourishing himself on the fruits of his labors.

G.G.