I have, from the beginning of my own knowledge/experience of/with the Anthology, considered it very much a museum like preservation of arrays of aspects of human cultural history/doings. There is far more information on those songs than just enjoying the surface of the sounds/lyrics for it's own sake. It is an encapsulation of incalculable sums of information/data/knowledge far beyond any expressible words.

Anyway, before finally breaking down and requesting membership in order to join in on Mudcat (I've never guest posted, but been checking in to read from time to time over a couple of months), I noticed and read this thread I think yesterday morning. I was particularly struck by some things that Art Thieme (RIP) said above. I'm not sure what the proper way to quote others here is, but below is a CITE tagged quatation:

But these songs are history. They are the words of the folk that came before---they are the views of their world that they left us--changed by the oral and electronic tradition but devoid of the ditractions of their times like cholera and typhoid & no air conditioning and no machines to do the work. As Kurt Vonnegut said in __From Time To Timbuktu__, "Whenever I start to feel the slightest bit self-important, I think of all the dirt that never did get a chance to sit up and look around." Our folksongs are the ones that tell real and detailed stories of the people in a given place at a certain moment---those that left us their songs so we might better understand the trails that brought us from then to now. They took the time to look around.

Man, what a lot of worthwhile perspective he packed into that! I was struck by this *before* the immediately above parts of the conversation began into whether or not it is history or entertainment, and had already intended to recognize my appreciation for those comments from Art. I Googled him at the time and discovered him to have since passed. Heck, the first time I came and really did some reading here a couple of months ago it was from an Origins thread Google sent me to that featured Jean Ritchie providing some insights on a song ("Swing and Turn, Jubilee") before she had passed. What an incredible place Mudcat is!