There are people who can or cannot sing particular songs, or whom songs belong to.
This style of singing that I am inspired by is rooted in communities of Scottish Travellers of the North East of Scotland. I have a commitment to the style of singing, but I do not see myself as having a role in the preservation of the arts of Traveller Culture or in saving songs from oblivion. Traveller Culture doesn’t need to be acknowledged or heard by settled people in order to have legitimacy. That is why I focus my efforts on creating new work that isn’t based on a concept of these songs as archaic relics or cultural products for export.
I see songs as “a way of trying to describe what is in fact going on, what people actually do and feel, how people relate to everything else in this vast sack, this belly of the universe, this womb of things to be and tomb of things that were.” — The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, Le Guin, 1986