"Not if you don't recognise the role of the collector and their view of themselves in the 'folk process'."
They have no role in the 'folk process' - they are reporters not participants.
Saying which, there is no traditional song sung in the revival that has not been collected and passed on to us.
Some of our field singers; Walter Pardon, Stan Hugill, Duncan Williamson, William Mathieson, John Strachan... were collectors in their own right and conciously set out to 'collect' songs from their own community, yet it was collectors who recorded their collections from them and gave them to us revivalists.
Walter Pardon wrote down his family's songs and either remembered the tunes himself or got them from surviving members of his family, preserving them by playing them on his melodeon. We are indepted to Walter's nephew, Roger Dixon, who persuaded him to put them on a tape, which was passed to Peter Ballamy and first recorded systematically by Bill Leader.
Stan Hugill assembled a collection of songs from his fellow seamen and gave them to Seamus Ennis during the BBC's 'mopping up' campaign in the fifties.
Duncan Williamson gathered stories and ballads from members of the Scots Travelling community and was partially recorded by School of Scottish Studies, Peter Hall and others. Eventually his massive repertoire (particularly of stories) was systematically recorded by American researcher Linda (can't remember her family name, but she eventually became the second Mrs Williamson).
William Mathieson collected songs and stories from friends and neighbours in Ellon, Aberdeenshire and was the first singer to be recorded for the School of Scottish Studies by Hamish Henderson.
John Strachan learned songs from his family and from farm servants on his family farm and sang them to Alan Lomax in 1951.
It was common practice for traditional singers to write down their own, family members', and friends and neighbors in exercise books. A number of these were archived by collectors and researchers such as Tom Munnelly and Peter Cook.
And the beat goes on....!
It takes a special kind of begrudgery to benefit from the work of collectors by taking and singing the songs they have passed on to us, refusing to recognise their role, then boast about it.
Well done - keep it coming.
Jim Carroll