Excellent Howard - that really is what it should be about, and until it is folk music will never be taken seriously and will only survive on bookshelves and in archives.
Anybody can sing (our sadly, now demised cat, could give it a fair try) but it takes work to become a singer.
MacColl, (who, admittedly, was porone to exaggeration) said that it took three months from the finding of a new song to his performing it in public. I have no way of verifying the accuracy of his claim, but I do know several of us were singing his 'Alan Tyne of Harrow' in public before he did.
Jim Carroll