I know I will regret getting invoved in this but.............


1. The 19C/20C collectors selected some songs from singers and ignored other songs from the same people
2. The singers in question sang very old songs, old songs, songs from friends and family songs fom broadsides, hymns and musichall songs and all sorts of other songs
3. Songs were collected in a number of contexts, pubs, homes, workhouses, rich houses and church settings
4. Much was written down by trained musicians with a pencil and paper and a strict education in music
5. Although some collectors may have been sympathetic to the impoverished lives of working people they often knew little of the lives of the singers.
6. People have been collecting and singing old songs for hundreds of years from working people in all sorts of contexts and lots of different parts of these Islands.
7.The collectors edited and shared some but not all of what they collected.

So, "Traditional singer definition"?

No chance.

Singing old songs that have been around for year? Lets do it. Isn't the essential link between the singers who were the last source of these old songs and those of us who sing them now the context? We most often sit in smallish acoustic spaces and sing the songs to small collections of people and in that context the songs are at theie best and so are the singers.

L in C#