Okay, if you insist.

Folk music is the music of folks. It originated with folks who were sick and tired of listening to reels and quadrilles set to Gregorian chant day in and day out. So the folks threw this music of the court and church over, and tattletales ran to the people who composed it and cried, "The folk are revolting!" and he she or it agreed. But when it was explained, he she or it jumped to his her or its feet in rage and said, "We shall have none of that new folking shit music around here!" and sent the Army and the Navy to cut down those rebels. The Army galloped on their horses into many sessions, house concerts, and festivals, hacking many folk to death with their lances and skewering uncountable bagpipers on their sabers, causing the piobrachs to collapse with a sort of "PHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRBBBBBBBBBBBTTTTTTTTTTTTTT" sound much akin to that of a dying flautulent horse, while the Navy sailed around looking for what to do. But the folk persisted, mostly because it was persist or listen to Gregorian Chant hoedowns and eventually the Army and the Navy not only found better things to do, they started creating folk songs and folk music themselves and the composers grew wroth, but since they were a bunch of sissies and the Army and the Navy had the sabers, lances, halberds, maces, morning stars, pitchforks, Maxim guns, and gladii, they kept their wroth quiet. After a while, the barriers fell but it took an American composer to write folk music and folk songs into the "Billy the Kid Suite" (unless you count Haydn writing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" into the "Surprise Symphony" which most people don't, since there are few folks who can handle Handel, much less Handel Haydn, unless Handel's hidin'). Then came the great Woody Guthrie and fecund Morris Dancer and Bob Dylan and Buffy St. Marie and Ewan McColl and Pete Seeger and Peterpaul N. Mary and folk songs and music were rampant and ubiquitous. A plague of beatles nearly extinctified folk, but it still continues to be loved and appreciated and sometimes even sung and played by at least six people around the world, of whom I am one. I would also discuss folk dance here, but I don't have the time or will; I can, however, state unequivocally that it derived from the mating ritual of that legendary British animal, the Twobacked Beast.

Note, please, that I have used the four letters F, O, L, and K in that order at least once in every sentence of the above paragraph. It is a complete history of folk music and song and a partial history of folk dance.

Where's my prize?