I am supposed to be working on some proposals, and I keep getting sucked back into this fracas!!

I think that defining "folk music" is a perspective problem--a lot like the problem of deciding who "discovered" America--the question can be redefined from many different and valid perspectives, each redefinition produces a different set of answers--(Columbus, the Vikings, Chinese Buddhists, the Ancient Romans)--even more interesting because each set of answers tends to make another set seem absurd--

My favorite answer came from one of those "Kids Say the darnedest things" type things, and went something like " no one discovered America, it was always here, but no one used to what it was"

"Folk music" is the music that was always there, but nobody knew what it was---It was collected because it was there, and seemed intrinsically interesting--and then, collectors being what they are, explanations were called for and created later--different perspectives tending to render other ones absurd-

"Folk music" refers to a large, vague, body of music that "nobody use to know what it was" and any effort to define it tends to rule out things that certain groups feel are included, and to include things that other groups feel should not be included--

There are more specific genre words that we can use, like Sea Chanty or Kolo, or Hula or Work Song, or Strathspey, or Murder ballads, that we are more clear about, so they are easier to discuss--

Anyway, as far as your definitions go, Frank, they don't help much--popular music follows strict genre rules--lyrics tend primarily to be a fomulaic reworking of what ever set of folkloric images and ideas are temporally appropriate--the melodic material generally being the least reworked aspect of all, often just lifted--and it evolves through the "folk process" as well--

As to Aural transmission--all rock music is aurally transmitted--and the rock genres--such as heavy metal, grunge, and rap do reflect a cultural subgroup--they are create within the subgroup, utilized with in the subgroup, and when they are popularized, they flow from the subgroup to the broader culture--

And, as to issues of culture--what do you do when you present "Traditional music" to a auditorium full of kids, or a club full of yuppies(I only use this term in the best sense) but to commercialize it--come to think of it, even someone like Jean Ritchie is "commercializing", which is to say, marketing her music to an audience not of the culture that "folk-processed" it--

As a parting thought,we would have been much more focussed if the thread had been titled, "What can we do to make murder ballads more appealing?" or some such thing--