Listen up- There is NO meaning to the word folk in "folk" music. There are many many meanings, all of them valid: a continuation of a musical tradition, a musical style, an expression of ethnic identity, an un-amplified performance,a song at least XX years old with an unknown composer, a song that has been changed in the course of oral/aural transmission, a song that's performed by amateurs only, a song that's sung to members of the same cultural group as the singer,anything that's heard at a folk festival....There's also no agreement, so these discussions, besides becoming teejus, tend to resemble the blind men's discussion of the nature of an elephant (who, like a horse, doesn't sing folk songs),

If anyone cares, the Digital Tradition's definition of a folksong is anything anyone likes enough to send in. It's not necessarily my definition, but wotthehell.