1) Fine, let's have another "What is folk" thread. Somewhere else.   The 1954 Definition may need to evolve, but horse definitioners cause in no distinctions betweentypes of music. It is not a matter of style.   The debate should preferably be between people who have read it first. Oh, and defintions do close debate in scinece. Go read the defintions of "Amp" "Volt" "Ohm", the standards for the defintion of the metre, etc. If a new defintion is to be proposed, it is necessary to formulate the problems with the old definition, suggst a new defintion, and argue the advantaages of the new. Simply saying "I don't like it and what I do ought to be called folk" is about as useful as the Monty Python theory of what a dinosaur was. Oh, and speaking of the "wilfully perverse" please tell the prime protagonist of the theory that there should be no such word. The GEFF debate is not about what "F" is, I think. Plenty of wince-making performers do mainly stuff that is not "folk" - often contemporary humorous songs like "The hash my father scored", or "The thieves of Peckham Rye".   

2) Works for me (except I'm not wholly sure what you mean by your reference to a "duck shoot". Where I come from some locals hunt ducks with crossbows to eat. If it's said to be folk, then people who don't like folk don't need to come. I quite like some reggae and ragga, but I'm not going to go to a concert advertiesd as such still less a rapper's open mic competition.

3) (a) Yes

3) (b) Different issue. If a tradition is a tradition then if what you do is not traditional then it's not the tradition (as I think Comhaltas hold, and look at the revivial over the last 30 years in Irish traditional music). There are two things about folk song. You can take it and perform it and arrange it as you wish. In that way in about the 60s the guitar became the prime folk music instrument. In that way the tradition does evolve without Comhaltas pickling in aspic. Secondly, if you look at the 1954 definition it allows for the adoption and evolution of composed pop music, and so too "folk song" evolves. "Tradition" is not the relevant workd in the second part of that evolution.

4) Don't tell me, tell the people who say some people should not be allowed to sing because they alienate people from "folk". As I think Adge Cutler and the Wurzels said "Don't tell I tell 'ee"

5) One person's aesthetics is another's convention. Personally I think ties look silly (but I still sometimes have to wear one). Surely we do not mock the convention or culture of another simply because it is alien to our personal mono-universe, do we (still)?   I always thought skin'eads looked ridiculous, sort of stick figures with clown shoes and wingnuts for heads.   I also understood why the skin'ead culture was. It was a revolution against the pretensions of "progressive music".


It does not lie in the mouths of the self-appointed to act as gatekeepers. Subject as aforesaid, delight to discuss it with someone who listens and responds rationally even if not in agreement with me.

But don't you think it odd that so many of the horse definitioners, after wanting to define the music they perform as "folk" then want to stop some people singing it?