Thank you for widening this dialogue - I was beginning to feel guilty for monopolising Tom Bliss.
First can we clear up 'academic', which tends to be used as invective nowadays.
My dictionary gives
Pertaining to university... etc
Scholarly to the point of being impractical
Pertaining to formal education
Formalistic, conventional
Merely theoretical - speculative.
or Pertaining to the academy and philosophy of Plato
Don't know which of those you had in mind Sue, but the 1954 definition was based largely on the work done by Sharp in the field, which he wrote up in 'English Folk Songs, Some Conclusions'. Sharp certainly was a collector, but if he was an academic he spent a great deal of time at the coal-face, and his aim in collecting what he did was specifically for performance.
The fact that the IFMC includes performance and dissemination in their list is surely indicative that their aims were not purely academic.
Sharp's work was re-visited by Bert Lloyd in 1967 - was he an academic? As I remember him he was that lovely balance of researcher and performer. It was he who drew my attention to the 1954 definition in Folk Song in England. I seem to remember that Bert was involved in drawing up the 1954 definition - not sure if he was wearing his 'academic' or 'performing' hat at the time!
MacColl / largely performer with a deep interest in the subject, was happy to accept the definition
Me - I spent my working life as an electrician, fell in love with folk song as an apprentice on the Liverpool docks and, even though that interest tended to go fairly deeply from the word go, that love-affair has lasted a lifetime; I am certainly not an academic.
The revival I came into in 1962 was largely the offspring of the 1954 definition; that's what you got when you paid your entrance fee.Any knowledge I might have on the subject came from singing, listening, reading, helping run clubs and thirty years worth of interviewing traditional singers.
Snail
"Did the communities in which this music thrived call it "folk music"?"
Some did, some didn't. Walter Pardon certainly did. I think I included transcripts of what Walter had to say in a thing I wrote for the Enthusiasms page of Musical Traditions entitled 'By Any other Name'.
Blind Travelling woman Mary Delaney called the songs, "Me daddy's songs' even though she only learned a tiny handful of the 100 songs she sang us from her father. Mary refused to sing us any of her country and western songs because she said "they had the old songs ruined' and had only learned them because 'that's what the lads ask me for in the pub".
Traveller Mikeen McCarthy, Traveller called them "fireside songs" and Clare small farmer Tom Lenihan called them "the old tradition". Other singers we have met have called them 'folk' 'the old songs' and '"come-all-ye's". The point is, whoever we questioned isolated a group of songs and named them. I referred to Tom Lenihan as a 'small farmer' the term generally applied to those of his occupation and background. He would not have referred to himself by that description; others in his position might even take offence - but that is what Tom was.
The name on the door I came in - folk - whether it was chosen by a committee, or whether it evolved, was widely accepted internationally, was part of the definition, and, as far as those of us who continue to research the subject, is still very much in current use.
If you wish to challenge it, adapt it to include other types of music or replace it altogether, please feel free to do so, but you have to take the original definition as your starting point, and explain how, why and into what it has changed.
"is there any other word in common usage that has been defined by a committee?"
I assume that by this statement, you are challenging the validity of the original definition - on what grounds? Surely definitions can be arrived at by those working in the specific field. As I write at present, two of my friends are working on definitions of aspects of music for an Irish encyclopedia. I believe VWMLibrarian Malcolm Taylor has contributed definitions to various works. Personally, I can't think of any better arrangement.
Howard:
"I agree that a performance of Beatles songs doesn't qualify as folk under any definition,"
How dare you make such a claim; what makes your definition, or non-definition any more valid than a club that decides to call a night of Beatles songs 'folk'. I've certainly heard people argue for the Beatles songs to be considered folk because of their continued popularity in pub sing-songs. Are you claiming exclusive rights on changing the term?
The only solid argument I have heard for expanding or discarding the term folk has been it's alleged misuse, though that misuse appears to be a largely cynical exercise by a self-interest pressure group.
It makes gibberish of our language, but it also has a more sinister side.
George Orwell referred to such practice as 'Newspeak' and more recently, it has led to 'torture' being replaced in the vocabulary with 'special rendition', killing your own side as 'friendly fire' and 'the massacre of civilians as 'collateral damage'.
Jim Carroll