Traditional music should not be encased in amber, never to be touched again. It should evolve and change and live. By its very essence it has to change as part of the folk process. From the very 1954 definition that traditionalists set such great store by.

The term can be applied to music that has been evolved from rudimentary beginnings by a community uninfluenced by popular and art music and it can likewise be applied to music which has originated with an individual composer and has subsequently been absorbed into the unwritten living tradition of a community.