"folk music has become a 'sound'. In practice that's what folk now is."
Thinking about all the different sounds claimed to be 'folk' by various people, clubs, music journalists... etc. If you start with Harry Cox, Robert Cinnamond, Paddy Tunney, Joe Heaney, Ewan MacColl, Frankie Armstrong.... onto Seth Lakeman, Jim Moray, Eliza Carthy... then to The Watersons, Steeleye Span, Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Ralph McTell. If you include music hall as 'folk' you have Two Lovely Black Eyes, Knock 'Em in The Old Kent Road, Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom De Ay, She Sits Among the Cabbages and Peas.... Then of course there's 'Parlour Ballad Folk' like Come Into The Garden Maud and Oft In The Stilly Night; not forgetting songs that have "recently become 'folk'" according to some schools of thought like Yellow Submarine, Heartbreak Hotel, Viva Espania...... I wonder what that 'sound' might be now considered 'folk' - all of these, or none maybe.
Jim Carroll