Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803), a Prussian-born poet, critic, theologian, and philosopher, is the first person (as far as anyone knows) to use the term "volkslieder"—folk songs. He was referring to songs of the "rural, peasant class," and he recommended that composers collect and study this music as a means of helping them make their own compositions have a more regional or national character, thus giving their music some roots.

Back then, most people knew what kind of music von Herder was talking about.

But "rural, peasant class?" In this day and age, and in this country, we don't like to think of society being stratified into classes. This is a democracy, isn't it? Therefore, there are no classes. Especially a "rural, peasant class!" Dear me, NO! We can't have that sort of thing, now can we? Aren't we all "just plain folks?"

Thus, one gets non-definitions like "folk songs are the songs folks sing." Or the comment often attributed to Big Bill Broonzy when asked if a particular song was a folk song:    "Well, I've never heard it sung by a horse!" Or the ever popular introduction you hear at open mikes:   "This is a folk song I wrote yesterday when I was riding home on the bus."

There is a body of songs that are "traditional" or "folk songs." But these days, no one seems to be able to agree on where the boundaries are. I think most people would agree that a Child ballad is a folk song. And they would generally agree that "La donna e mobile" from Verdi's Rigoletto or the "Hallelujah Chorus" from Handel's Messiah or "Wouldn't it be Loverly?" from Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady are not folk songs, even if they are regularly sung by human beings rather than four-legged livestock.

But are the songs Bob Dylan wrote "folk songs?" Or Woody Guthrie's songs? Or Tom Paxton's? How about "Greensleeves," which many people believe to be the quintessential English folk song (background music in a lot of movies when they want to evoke rural, pastorale England)? I have seen little evidence that "Greensleeves" was sung much by von Herder's "rural, peasant class' or that it meets the criteria usually set by ethnomusicologists to classify it as a folk song rather than an art song.

Where will the new folk songs come from? Anybody's guess. Just about any song can become a folk song if enough people learn it and sing it simply because they like it for some reason. And my bet is that the "folk song" that was written on the bus the day before singing it at the open mike probably won't make the cut, unless it appeals to enough people who learn it and sing it, and it continues to be learned and sung by more people over a substantial period of time.

What is folk music? As "Deep Thought," the monster computer in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy said when asked "What is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything?"    "Hmm. Tricky."

If anything and everything can fit the definition of "folk music," then "folk music" has no real definition. A definition specifies that something is this, but not this, this, and even this.

For now, I guess about the best one can do is figure that folk music is whatever is found on the CDs you find in the bin marked "Folk Music" at your favorite record store.

And I pretty much agree with what GUEST,Shimrod says just above.

Don Firth