Hi Mike,
I don't think I was referring specifically to anything you said.
In the end it isn't was we like or dislike, a specific definition only disappears when it is replaced by another - define "contemporary folk".
People argue about not putting labels on things but everything we know has a label. We use them so we know which tin to open.
"I genuinely do not know what a folk song is."
Then go and buy a book, or look it up in a dictionary - we must have several hundred on our shelves which use the term without ambiguity, many with the word 'folk' in the title..
This really isn't a question of semantics.
We started to visit Ireland regularly in the early 70s when you had to fight your way up country lanes to tucked away cottages to hear good traditional musis (with a few tiny exceptions). You never heard it on the radio and if you went into a pub with a fiddle or flute, you were looked on with deep suspicion (if you weren't thrown out on your arse, that is).
Nowadays folk music has come into its own, I can turn the radio on television on most nights of the week (I now live in Ireland) and hear and watch excellent programmes on the subject ranging from brilliant sessions to academic discussions. Traditional musicians who have long since died are remembered by singing and music weekends which start at the beginning of January and finish in mid-December each year.
Up to the present recession if you asked for money for a research project or to produce an album - you were pushing at an open door - I know because we were beneficiaries of a large grant last year.
We have two world class Traditional national music archives in the country and are in the process of establishing local ones.
Last year this one street village purchased a house to establish a county archive and visitors centre and by the end of the year we will have a large amount of material on line - we already have thousands of hours of recordings in the process of being catalogued.
Within a five mile radius of this town there must be upward of 150 children and young adults playing traditional music ranging from good to national standard.
Why; because the people concerned didn't run round like headless chickens saying 'we don't know what to call our music'.
G'luck - must go, Hustle's on the box.
Jim Carroll