To me, it only matters in the sense of letting me know what's on offer. If something is described as an evening, or a weekend, of 'Folk Music' I like to be reasonably sure what most of the music will be like before I go. I certainly don't demand that certain people shouldn't be 'allowed' at 'folk' events, but if I go to a 'folk' event and get mostly accoustic pop, jazz, blues, C&W or whatever, I may feel that I have been mislead. I may well enjoy the evening, but I'd rather have been told more accurately what I was in for. Especially if I've paid for it.

Our local folk club, on singers nights, is happy to welcome anyone who comes along singing anything they like, although most of the regulars usually sing stuff that at least sounds like traditional folksong. Some of us write our own. We've never said to anyone 'that's not folk, you can't sing that here'. But it's still a 'mostly folk' club, and people know what they're likely to get.

Guest nights, when people have to pay to get in, are a different matter, and some professional performers, good though they may be at what they do, may well be considered 'not folk enough', though the definition seems (I don't do the bookings) fairly elastic.

To me, it looks more as though the rows over definitions which have raged here are down to people who profess to despise and detest the sort of stuff that the term 'Folk Music' was coined to describe, wanting to broaden the definition so that they can get gigs in folk clubs. That's similar to someone like myself, who dislikes opera and wouldn't want to sing it if I could, trying to redefine opera as 'any fat bloke who shouts a lot' so that I can sing my own type of music in opera halls. Don't think that would work.

Just my take on this - your experience may differ.

Andrew