Nerd,

Preservationists BEGIN with reverence. But in my experience with the American old time music scene that's not the end of the story.

Once upon a time our motivation was the naive desire to play it "just like Tommy played it" based upon a host of equally naive assumptions about musical traditions and traditional musicians.

We were so much old then.

Well, we boomers are now as old as or even older than the "old guys" were when we learned at their knees. We've lived and we've learned.

We now know that many of our sources were not all that concerned with preservation. They tended to be musically eclectic and often presented us with a highly selective portion of their repertoires when they understood what we wanted.

They were conscious and proud of the fact that they were the heirs of a tradition, but they weren't slavish about it, nor did they feel the need to be.

Looks like we're starting to think like them too. Preservation is good and valid and valuable, but a little individuality doesn't hurt. I remember Bob Carlin at a Maryland Banjo Academy workshop. He begin by admitting that he experienced a bit of conflict when playing his copy of a Boucher fretless, skinhead, gut string, minstrel banjo. In the old days he played only such tunes as would have been played on such a banjo in the 19th century. But he felt that the banjo itself had a really cool sound that worked well with other material. He then broke into a passable rendition of "She said I know what it's like to be dead."

It's fun to see our kids exhibit the same high purism we once had when they compare the fine points of difference between Melvin Wine's and Ernie Carpenter's "Jimmy Johnson."