"don't let any bugger tell you their vision of folk music is better than yours"

But Al, that is exactly what you seem to be trying to do with your own claims, and your denigration of traditional music.

Like MGM I don't see any musical connection between what you do and the traditional music which is at the core of 'folk'. Nevertheless I acknowledge that it falls within the wider understanding of 'folk'. What I object to is your (and others') continual assertion that yours is the True Way and that traditional music is an irrelevant anachronism. That it may be for you, and perhaps your audiences, doesn't make it true.

As I've pointed out before, 'folk' is a broad genre which now covers not only its original meaning of traditional music but also a lot more, some of which resembles traditional folk, some of which doesn't but somehow manages to sit alongside it, and some which is put in the 'folk' category because it can't really be put into any other genre and 'folk' is the closest fit. Some would say it's too broad and vague to be useful, but I would say no more than any other genre - they all cover a very wide variety of music, often with only a tenuous connection, which do no more than point you to the right section of the record shop. Terms like 'classical' or 'jazz' without any further qualification give you no more information about what you might expect to hear than does 'folk'.

I think this discussion has become the negative side of the "what I like is folk" claim - the fallacy that says "I like folk, I don't like that, so it can't be folk". Jim worries that folk clubs are being taken over by pop songs and that traditional music is no longer welcome in folk clubs. I think he is wrong, and that this is based on what he admits is a limited sampling - I think he has just been unlucky in the clubs he has visited. Al seems to think that his way is the future of folk - I think he is wrong too, but that's not to say that he doesn't have a place in it.

I think the other thing to bear in mind is that music isn't just music - we all bring other elements to it which reinforce our own identity and prejudices. This is as true of folkies as it is of mods, punks, goths, emos, Last Night of the Prommers and all the other groups which identify themselves more or less closely with a particular style of music. This makes it very difficult to discuss objectively, as this discussion has demonstrated.