if it hadn't been for people like Sharp & Child or Bartok so much more would have been lost... and why did they make the effort???

why did it matter if songs were no longer widely sung and were at risk of being lost... just like 99% of all previous music.

in the process of preserving songs labels got assigned... and now we obsess about the labels... sigh

ethnomusicologists are music geeks - something I can relate to as a fellow geek- geeks still enjoy music and beauty, we just tend to process it a bit differently than the average listener or singer.

does any of that make a song better or worse? of course not, it just adds or detracts from the enjoyment- depending on the point of view.

just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder... enjoyment follows the same dictate. different strokes for different folks... if it's not a thread you agree with... depart & leave it to those find some value in it.