Ron,
How the word 'folk' is used by a small group within a slightly larger, but still minuscule group of people involved in folk clubs, may have changed, but that doesn't mean that the definition has changed - language doesn't work like that, nor should it.
Now matter how many people talk about 'special rendition', torture will always be torture (TBTG).
I find these discussions interesting, stimulating, even vital, but in the end they are academic - no matter what a handful of us might argue on a thread on Mudcat, nothing will happen to the definition of 'folk' until somebody produces a new one, - i.e., researches the subject, documents it and gets it accepted. The existing definition meets all these requirements, and there is both a consensus and a large body of literature to back this up. Anything else (so far) is wishful thinking on the part of a small group of people with a personal stake in the subject.
Earlier you offered 2 definitions which I would be happy to consider should my opinion ever be sought.
1. Music originating among the common people of a nation or region and spread about or passed down orally, often with considerable variation.
2. Contemporary music in the style of traditional folk music.
I suggest that both of these are a million miles from an evening of Beatles songs at a folk club, or letting the record shop owner decide, or whatever is put on in folk clubs is folk.
I've argued for a long time that the '54 definition needs re-visiting, but it has to be based on what we have learned about the defined music since then, rather that a strange desire the part of people who wish, for some unfathomable reason, to identify their compositions with a music they neither like nor understand.
Guest Rich:
You made an important point some time ago which I intended to respond to, but got bogged down elsewhere.
You are, of course right; the question of literacy and folk music is a complicated one and is very much one of the aspects of the definition that needs expanding on.
Some of the most interesting (to me) work we did was with a Traveller who was illiterate, yet who produced and sold ballad sheets round the fairs of Southern Ireland in the 1940s.
Literacy and the oral tradition is not the black-and-white issue that I implied it was in an earlier posting - sorry.
Jim Carroll