I wasn't going to post this at Mudcat, but this seems to be the right time and place for it. It's my most recent on-line column for the website of the PLANK ROAD FOLK MUSIC SOCIETY west of Chicago. About a week or three ago, these thoughts were keeping me awake---so I jumped up and wrote 'em down...
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The main job of a folksinger, I've always felt, is to explore the past. After skimming the scum of the present off the top of the historical pond, folksingers mine the depths for the artifacts that were lost --- some long ago and some more recently. They find, clean up, polish and sometimes enhance the overlooked found pieces of music and/or poetry so they can be shown to people here and now in a way that allows modern people to feel some of the emotions experienced by those that lived, loved, worked, fought, struggled and then died in that whole other time and place.

The extent to which the one calling themselves a folksinger does that, determines whether that person is, or is not, a folksinger.

Modern singer-songwriters stand here and now and look at today's personal ongoing dramatic situations and traumas. They also look, artistically and insightfully into the future for their inspiration, and then they speculate about how what we are doing might enhance or detract from those days to come. Some of today's songwriters will become legends --- famous and infamous --- rich or poor. But most, from where I sit, will not become folksingers.

Only when their presented music is a result of looking and studying about how people of the past turned their lives into art that chronicled that life, can the songs they uncovered be real folksongs.

It is all about the timeline!! In the future, what is made now may become a folksong. -- Then someone from that future, someone who understands the rules (yes, the rules!) finds the appropriate artifacts you or I may have thought little of --- and maybe tossed by the wayside. That gem when re-examined, could exhibit real, possibly ironic meaning for the folks of that new reality. --- If it is presented in a way that shows the connection between what is said in the lyric, maybe in-between the lines, older folklore artifacts can be instantly updated. --- A semi-comic line like, "Hey, here is a song from the last depression"---automatically makes an old song a way to see current hard times--or wars---or disasters from the Johnstown Flood and Nah's flood to our recent tsunami or 9/11.   Then, when that person who knew/knows what to look for brings it forth, it is and ought to be called an actual folksong --- and that individual is an actual folksinger.

Purist? Revivalist? Whatever. I just know I've spent a lot of time over the last half century trying to say this the right way. I do hope it means something true to you. But this is me--what it comes down to -- in a nutshell -- to me. It is only the way I see it---and some of why I see it that way---for what it's worth. I mean no offense to anyone. ------ People, I always considered myself to be a folksinger about 60% of the time---possibly a little more I hope. If Barry Bonds, with or without steroides, had batted as well, he would've hit 600. Not too bad!

This is pretty much what Frank Hamilton said in this thread too I think. It's the excitement of the treasure hunt---and then finding a piece of the Grail here and there--every so often. That's what being a folksinger is all about! This is what made and makes it an academic discipline for so many of the purist Catters and ballad scholars---as exhibited in the best threads this place has to offer.

Art Thieme