Are you ever going to get to Swinton BTW?

Problem with mid-week clubs is our early starts the following morning, but hopefully we'll be getting over for one of your March singers nights. Any club with a penguin on its website has got to be worth a visit!

a heart-felt reaction to "Blues, Shanties, Kipling, Cicely Fox Smith, Musical Hall, George Formby, Pop, County, Dylan, Cohen, Cash, Medieval Latin, Beatles, Irish Jigs and Reels, Scottish Strathspeys, Gospel, Rock, Classical Guitar, Native American Chants, Operatic Arias and even the occasional Traditional Song and Ballad" definition of 'folk'

Hey, don't shoot the messenger, old man! Just reporting on the empirical facts of folk as I regularly experience it in many of the folk clubs I go to where the defining factor is one of celebratory humanity irrespective of genre, though there is invariably more than a hint of what the 1954 Definition calls Folk Character. I'm torn here because I'm a Traddy who sings Trad and likes hearing Trad, but I'm also in favour of the inclusive ideal of the come-all-ye & believe that people should be able to sing whatever they like - which is just as well really, because that's pretty much what they do.

None of this makes the slightest difference to the fact that there is an existing and workable definition of the term 'folk' and [...] this will remain the case for some time to come.

Only for the 1954 Orthodoxy, old man - the rest of the world, including the IFMC that came up with it, appears to have moved on.