"Such songs for example, would be "Penny Lane" and "Eleanor Rigby","
Oh dear: I put up the Beatles example as how bad it could get - and it got worse!
Sorry folks - this is nonsense. You can't even agree among yourselves. 'Penny Lane' - give us a break; can Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey be too far behind, I wonder!!!
If anything convinces me of the need for a clear definition, this does.
"However, to the general public, both would be considered folksingers"
Do you have any grounds for claiming this? Since ALL sides of this argument have totally failed to catch the interest of the 'general public' I suggest that they would have no idea what it was.
"Did the communities in which this music thrived call it "folk music""
I replied 'some did' and mentioned Walter Pardon. I could have mentioned 'Straighty Flanagan' Mikey Kelleher, Duncan Williamson, 'Pop's' Johnny Connors, Martin Howley... and a number of others, all who we have heard use the term at one time or another and whose names would almost certainly have meant nothing to you. Your somewhat grudging "well, that's one" suggests that it would have been pointless for me to have done so. Walter was an extremely intelligent, perceptive and articulate man who gave a great deal of thought to what he did; far more so than most revival singers I have met and debated with. He had the added advantage of having been part of a living tradition.
"Were the communities that the songs were collected from were represented at Sao Paulo?"
No they weren't, and I find the suggestion that they should have been somewhat odd.
As much as I admired Sam Larner and Phil Tanner, I couldn't imagine them to speak on behalf of say a Lancashire weaving community or a Durham mining village, let alone communities in Spain, Finland, Rumaina... and all the other places covered by the definition.
It was arrived at, at the time of the greatest collecting project ever carried out in these islands before or since, on behalf of the BBC. Among those involved in that were Sean O'Boyle, son of a traditional singer and musician, Seamus Ennis, a musician and singer with at least one foot firmly in the tradition, and our own Bob Copper, member of Britain's number one 'folk' family. Assisting in an advisory capacity was Paddy Tunney, son of one of Ireland's finest traditional singers and one in his own right.
Also involved around this time was the magnificent American traditional singer, Jean Richie
It would be ludicrous to suggest that the findings of all this work was not taken into consideration when arriving at the definition, particularly as the nephew of one of the IFMC members was head of the BBC project.
This member, Maud Karpeles had worked with Sharp, so was familiar with the collecting in the South of England and in the Southern Appalachians and was a collector in her own right in Newfoundland.
The definition was accepted in Britain and abroad by academics and performers alike.
I would suggest that any challenge would be best aimed at the definition itself rather than the somewhat ingenuous approach of undermining the authority of its authors.
By the way, the damage that has been done to folk music by the attempted abandoning of ANY definition was not done 'a long time ago' as has been suggested, it has been, and still is a process of erosion.
I like to believe that even at this late stage the process can be reversed, but if that is to be the case it will take a little more thought and sensitivity than has been shown so far in these discussions.
Jim Carroll