Yes yes, Blandy. But your persistence in this counter-everyone-and-everything vein which you affect is becoming tiresome and overdone. There is probably much truth in your urgings about the disingenuous factitiousness of much of 'the tradition'; & of the influence of lateC19/earlyC20 anthropologists determined to find what confirmed their theories; & of the selectiveness of the early collectors with their scorn for so much of their informants' repertoires and offerings which didn't meet their own predetermined criteria ~~~

Yes yes, we all know all that ~~~

But beware of going too much to the other extreme and denouncing absolutely any and every concept of 'the tradition' as non-existent, a con, an imposition on the national æsthetic ~~~

Remember the wise words of James Thurber in the moral to one of his Fables For Our Time -- "You might as well fall flat on your face as bend over too far backwards!" ~~

And just think of that poor baby in the bathwater.....

Best regards

~M~