First off, when John Lomax first began collecting and publishing, he was heavily critized for including cowboy song s and blues in the canon. He stuck to his guns and 50 years later both were included in the canon. Secondly, when Alan Lomax published Folk Songs of North America, he cited Louis Armstrong as being America's most authentic folksinger. Armstrong was pure jazz and pop. He also included Jelly Roll Morton - pure jazz.

Therefore, we always haver to update the folk canon with newer genres. I include these newer genres in teh folk canon - Beatles (especially the psychodelic electronic stuff like Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite, A Day inteh Life and Strawberry Fiends :) Forever) I would include Reggae, Rap, Heavy Metal, Disco and Punk.

Third, Woody Guthrie said that Pete Seeger was a singer of folk songs and that Bob Dylan was a folksinger. Dylan can write! Applied to Rock and Roll, that would make the Byrds singers of folk song and the Beatles folksingers. How strong a writer is your candidate for Rushmore?

Perhaps- Bessie Smith, Daniel Johnston, Bob Marley and the Ramones?

Ruunners up: Sex Pistols, Led Zepplin (both heavily steeped in folk traditions)

Daniel Johnston deserves a write up. This is a real folksinger on keyboards. Peculiar indeed. Johnston spent his teen years making bedroom tapes of him singing away his angst on piano and a wide variety of homemade instuments. Again, steeped in the traditional, he blows the theory of the folk process right out of the water. Folk music no longer needs be the product of a community process. Folk music can be made (and probably ought to be made) by the "lone wolf." With a laptop this is even more possible and I pick Daniel as a model for the future folksingers of this world. His complete repetoire recorded in his teen years are a must for anyone who hopes to understand folk.

Folk music, real folk music, is incredibly progressive. It's not about baking cherry pies and snuggling with your cat on the couch. It's about drug smuggling, gory plane crashes and mass murders. It's about taking on the NSA and standing up for Eddie Snowden. It's New New Left.

And if you are from the UK, you've got no business putting faces on Rushmore! That's vandalism!