"We watched with some degree of anger and despair while the Irish Travellers magnificent song tradition disappeared virtually overnight... it is a supreme arrogance to suggest that what they carried is no longer of interest and not worth preserving."

It surely won't be lost on you that 'traditional music' has always required to someone from outside the class or culture to 'save' the people from themselves. Collection of anything, particularly tunes without the prevailing fashion, is an act of discrimination and connoisseurship. No-one from beyond the traveller community was telling them they couldn't keep the song and storytelling culture going, they had been replaced by a different set of stories provided by other media. That's been true of music hall replacing community singing since the whole industrial dispacement of country to town.

We may believe there's fascination in the remnant artifacts of a changing culture, we have no right to demand their preservation unless we are part of that culture. As for 'anger and despair' - anger and despair at whom? The people who originated it?