Thank you Jim... good to be friends again. And thanks for your take on style changing the song from folk to something else. I appreciate your opinion.

I am still not sure I can agree, because as Richard reinforced above The term does not cover composed popular music that has been taken over ready—made by a community and remains unchanged, for it is the refashioning and recreation of the music by the community that gives its folk character. It is that refashioning and recreation of the original article that makes me believe it is still folk. Just because a different rhythm or melody or changed/added lyrics have been hung onto it, the kernel is still folk and so makes the entire thing folk.

By the same token, if the following points hold true....

The factors that shape the tradition are:
(i)         Continuity which links the present with the past:
(ii)       Variation which springs from the creative impulse of the individual or group:
(iii)       Selection by the community, which determines the form or forms in which the music survives.

then folk is still being created, even as we discuss this. Example- popular songs from the mid 20th century are being revived, reshaped by a current community. What is written today (crappy as we may think some of it is) and is popular today will be adapted and reshaped by future community. There will be something in songs written today that apply specifically to this time and yet that future community will make a parallel... and so it goes. I am not thrilled that some day a rap song with lyrics I can barely understand may someday be folk. But the fact remains, if that song has something pertinient to a future community and is remade and carried forward, then it will have undergone the folk process described above. So not folk yet, but by the definition someday will be.

Am I making any sense? I don't express my ideasvery well, I am afraid. Too wordy. Anyway...

When Andie was apprenticing to a bard in the Meidival SCA, she/they made a distinction between what they called period (actual medieval) music and Perioid music
(which included filk and folk which was not necessarily medeival).

Would that there were a definition that would make this kind of distinction between folk and not folk.

I love music. Many different kinds. Part of me wants the tradtional music pure and unmuddied (I doubt very much that I have heard what would be considered by some the genuine article because each singer/performer changes the thing ever so slightly), and the other part of me understands that if the music was not taken by others and changed it might become altogether lost.

It is a damn difficult puzzle.

Blessings and peace too all.