I feel I can contribute to this debate, with the experience of over 40 years of folksong collecting behind me.

I think the point of the original thread was to ask what the difference is between a 'traditional' singer and a 'revival' singer and thereby to label singers as we do. In most cases this bestows on the on the 'traditional' singer a sort of magic aura and we hold them in special awe. However, this is a simplistic view of the situation.

Some examples - when I was younger, I learnt a lot of bawdy songs. They were never written down and at least some of them were derived from older songs. Does that make me a traditional singer? In one sense it could but I don't think that would qualify in most people's books. I have also learnt a lot of my songs directly from 'source' singers, usually by meeting them, recording them, in some cases singing along with them and ultimatly learning the songs from the recordings I made. Does that make me a traditional singer? Probably not because I set out with the express intent of recording the songs for my own pleasure and also with an academic thought in mind, namely that I was adding to the total sum of human knowledge by noting what was being sung and passed on independently from the folk 'scene'.

Of the singers I have met and recorded, many have had contact with the folk revival and have learnt songs. All of them have have learnt songs from the media, as well as from friends and family. For example, the gypsy singer Wiggie Smith, whom I knew well, recorded and sang with, had songs from all sorts of sources - family and friends but also from recoreds of George Formby, Norman Wisdom etc. I also guess that some of the songs he sang, such as 'The Rich Farmer of Sheffield' had probably been helped on their way sometime in the past by a broadsheet (and therefore, by definition from the media). And yet there is no doubt that people would label Wiggie as a 'tradional' singer, uninfluenced by the folk scene.

Conversely, I know a number of singers who would regard themselves as revival singers but who have certainly learnt songs straight from source singers. One well-known 'revival' singer that I know sang to me a cracking folk song that he had learnt when young in the school playground and yet he would hesitate to put the 'traditional' label on himself. A friend of mine in Gloucestershire has a large number of songs he learnt from various sources including old morris dancers, before he ever set foot in a folk club, but I suspect that he doesn't regard himself as a 'traditional' singer in the sense we mean here. And so the boundaries are very grey.

As a rule of thumb, by traditional (or 'source') singer I think of someone who sings songs he/she has learnt orally, uninfluenced by the folk scene or the media. From the collecting point of view (and the definition of 'collecting' can be a separate thread), I am interested in meeting such people, recording their songs if they are willing and finding out how they learnt the songs and in what context. As I said above, I like to think that this adds to the total sum of human knowledge that we have about our traditions.

Does all that make sense?

Tradsinger