CS said
> It's super that people write new songs in the 'folk idiom' and rightly enjoy doing that, but it's the archived body of traditional material that interests me not new songs absorbed into 'the tradition'. Whatever that means, they are not identical to the archived body of songs from the old oral tradition.

Ah, but that old oral tradition is pretty diverse. As I said recently in another thread, I don't see a lot in common between, for example, Cruel Mother, Cupid's Garden and Watters o' Tyne.) And that's without considering the diverse versions of Cruel Mother.

I reckon some songs made in the last 50-odd years (by the likes of MacColl, Tawney, Guthrie and Utah Phillips) can pass muster with songs made a century (or two or three) earlier. Equally, a lot of songs made over the centuries have disappeared into oblivion deservedly.

One of the defining aspects of the tradition, in this context, is selection. The old songs that have survived have done so because they have virtues that have appealed to a succession of song carriers. By and large, they continue to appeal to (some of) us now for the same reasons. Despite the changed circumstances of transmission, the transmission still happens, and I would expect repertoires in a hundred years time to include some of the recent songs along with some of those that are already old now.

This is not to say that I consider all the recent ones to be remotely comparable to the old ones. The old ones have passed through the selection process (as well as the transmission and variation that may or may not have improved them). The song makers that I have mentioned are all deceased, and their output has already been subject to some selection. The output of today's singer-songwriters is just being fed into the selection process (or not, if they prefer to enforce copyright and prohibit others from performing their songs).

Richard