Sweeney O'Pibroch, I don't think I've ever known anyone write as much gibberish and nonsense as you. If you are barely comprehensible to someone with an IQ that is well, fairly high, two degrees, and 40 years experience of reading the English legislative tradition and bureaucratese, and indeed has taught at two universities and one college of further education, where the fuck do you get off saying that folk music has been stolen from the working class? If you aren't part of the solution you are part of the problem (paraphrase from the MC5).

It is compete nonsense to say that the transmission of current music is similar to that of the pre-recording era. Nowadays the consumption of popular music is mostly via recording, not via performance (one's own or others') and indeed as far as performance goes the merit is judged by the similarity of the performance to the recorded original.

Your opposition to the learning and study of folk music so that it can be understood and continue to be enjoyed reminds me greatly of the gin-and-Jaguar-belt revolutionaries from Gerards Cross with whom I was somewhat acquainted in the 60s.