Don Firth - I appreciate your lengthy resume, but once again, you are missing the point of what I have been attempting to say.

I am not disagreeing with you about the pedigree of folk song. I too can say that I "did not just learn the songs I sing from Kingston Trio records, and my knowledge of the field goes a bit deeper than merely reading the notes on the backs of record jackets."

I am not arguing against any of the facts that you have stated. I know the difference between what Joan Baez does for entertainment and what Jean Ritchie has lived. I too have a lengthy list of individuals I've had the honor of interviewing who have collected and introduced true folk songs to the public.

I am in complete agreement with you as to what constitutes traditional music.

Where you and I break, is along the question of "what is modern folk music".   I realized that by academic definitions that the oral tradition has been replaced by modern technology that probably will eliminate the folk process in the future.

While you are sticking by the lessons you learned when you received your degree 40 or 50 years ago, I feel that the study of folk lore and folk music has continued and that the reason dictionaries have acknowledged modern song is because of those changes.   If we stuck by the knowledge we had of astronomy from 40 or 50 years ago, think of all the discoveries we would have missed.

I am honored that you have chosen to share you knowledge, and I respect your background.   I am sorry you feel that my input can be summarily ignored, but if the rest of the world wants to call "Blowing in the Wind" a folk song, I am not going to stamp my feet and hold my breath to turn blue in protest. The change in the usage of the words "folk music" has NOT diminished the traditional music that you have studied.

People were not turned off by Bob Dylan plugging in his guitar, they were turned off the the pedantic arguments that ignore the living tradition of folk music.