Nerd, I think the idea that struck me in that excerpt was the bit about "preservationists in a non-oral culture tend toward reverence". We are primarily a non-oral culture, and there is a tendency to deify traditional music at a certain point in its development, most often in its earliest recorded form. This doesn't take into consideration that the recorded form is not necessarily the definitive example, but only a snapshot as it were in the song's constantly changing history. It also doesn't mean that the early rcordings are not extrememly valuable, particularly as a touchstone to the song's sound and feel prior to widespread commercialization or dilution.

In our mass-media culture, where music is most clearly entrenched as a business of reaching the greatest number of ears with the most acceptable, least objectionable product, traditional music faces great challenges. Two hundred years ago, folk music was the principal form of popular song, and was passed and modified by generations of people across many lands. Today, we stand the chance of petrifying it as "period-music", unless we find a way to allow, within the context of modern society, those modifications and changes that define the Folk Process to continue.