Has this substitution of the modern reed instruments done any lasting harm?

There are many kinds of people. Some like to try everything, to change and tinker with what already exists. There are others who do not like things to change much and want to leave things pretty much as they found them . That is an over simplification I accept, and most of us are stuck somewhere in the middle. Both of these two extremes of human nature have served us well, in an evolutionary sense. They will never be reconciled and each places a check on the other in the ongoing battle for supremacy.

The radical and the conservative: When one gets taken to the bosom of the other, as happened in a political sense, when Margaret Thatcher led the Conservative Party in the UK, the results can be a bit of a disaster.

To return to the subject, I think that one of the checks that the latter has placed on the former, is the ultimate master stroke of combining together two entirely different and unreconcilable words.

These are the words traditional and music………

MUSIC
You can talk about past music and future music but music is ONLY produced in the present. Shadows and ghosts of past music can be recorded on paper, tape and now digitally and this has also confused the issue slightly. The full magic of true music is only to be found in the present moment and will never be exactly the same again. Whether you try to improvise or try to recreate a piece exactly, it will always be quite naturally, different.

TRADITIONAL
It may be traditional to your community to make music and play a simple frame drum, made of skin If you now use a metal drum with a plastic skin, although the music may change as a result, you are still continuing that tradition.
Tradition means to me, to continue a process and does not mean to do it only like it was done in the past. So I can probably reconcile the two words. However it does not mean that to the more conservative among us….. To them it IS the past. They were comfortable there and the future is uncertain Change is therefore heresy or showing little respect, hi-jacking or moving too fast or a number of other phrases that are used often on this forum. No matter how uncertain the future may be, it will certainly come It seems that it suits their purpose to have folk music on the margins and viewed generally as a quaint joke? Whether that was intentional, it is indeed the way folk music has been seen.

Define the word 'traditional' as you will and study it as you wish but let's just get on and make the music and not continue to use IT as the battleground.

Maybe the only way to reconcile the past/tradition and present/music is in the future? The attempts to prevent change, or slow it, or "not to break with tradition", may now be traditional but they always have been and always will be futile……….. How about starting a new tradition?

If you like your music a certain way then play it like that as often and as loud as you can. It is far more effective to do that, than to try, by 'navel gazing', qualifying and 'spitting hairs', to prevent others from playing their music, as they like it to sound.