Glueman
"Trick question"
You seemed to be implying that the world now has a different definition of the term 'folk' than the dictionary one - if so, what is that definition.
As far as I can see 'folk' as related to song remains as previously defined until the existing definition is altered or replaced to take in new aspects and circumstances. A tiny handful of 'folkies' who decide to hitch their particular brand of song to the term alters nothing.
What has changed is that the communities which once made, circulated and adapted the songs defined as 'folk' no longer do so - folk song as a living entity began to decline with the introduction of mass literacy, radio and finally television. The population became recipients of their culture and entertainment rather than participants in it. Can't speak for the US, but in Britain, the process seemed to have finished sometime in the early twentieth century and somewhat later in Ireland, probably the late fifties - early sixties. The Travelling communities were the last ones to cling on to a song tradition, but that died out in the mid seventies with the introduction of portable television in the caravans. What we have on record in archives of field recordings are singers remembering a living tradition, or remembering accounts of one from family and neighbours in areas where they once happened.
Now the only people who sing and listen to folk songs regularly are cranks like us who are part of the folk song revival - outsiders who believed, and still believe that the old songs still have relevance and entertainment potential, and form a pattern on which new songs can be made and circulated.
Much of this has been shouldered out of the folk scene by an undefinable repertoire which bears no relation whatever to 'folk' as defined by the dictionaries and by the mass of literature on the subject.
If there is a new definition of folk we have overlooked, what is it, or, at the very least, put us out of our misery and tell us where we can go to find it.
Jim Carroll