they will still be trying to decide what is folk music.

I think that was decided when the first folk played their first music. The present problem seems to be how to reconcile the inner ironies of a Folk Revival with a) the songs it claims to be reviving and b) the overall context of traditional music as a whole. The ICTM have given us an indication of the way forward in their inclusive remit (which even Jim hasn't said anything about) whilst the rest is just a matter of the Folky Faithful singing about how good the old one was, which is fair enough.

Somewhere above (or below, depending how you're viewing this thread) someone said how Round Hole Folk is essentially an American import, which is obviously the case. One wonders what proportion of the 2nd Generation Revival over the last 50 years has been about E. Trads; even JC digs Dylan, which I never have, although I adored his Theme Time Radio Hour show. So maybe it's Dylan who's the key to Round Hole Folk and the anything-goes-as-long-as-it's-played-on-an-acoustic-(round hole?)-guitar approach that is pretty much the norm in the English clubs these days?

I must admit, this was never an issue in the North-East where guitar-free singarounds are pretty much the norm. At our regular old club in Durham it was all unaccompanied traditional singing, with but few exceptions & if instrument there was it generally me with a Black Sea fiddle or a Hungarian zither. Here in the North West however you can't get moved for the guitar cases piling up round the door. I am not anti-guitar, not on the whole anyway, but I don't think it's in any way appropriate to accompany E. Trads with the chordal modulations that are only the musical orthodoxy of an American inspired revival. Such things are anathema to the vibrant core of Traditional Song, and ultimately, I fear, a debasement of its essence. But that's Round Hole Folk for you, which isn't Trad.

I know I might be sounding like WAV here, but this is one of the things I've been dealing with as a Square Peg Folkie all my life. Guitar wielding Round Hole Folkies have questioned (seriously) my use of Indian Harmoniums, Black Sea Fiddles, Welsh Crwths, North African Frame Drums, Vietnamese Jew's Harps, Hungarian Citeras and Electronic Shruti Boxes to accompany venerable E. Trads as being somehow non-traditional - and it's not the one time that my Square Peg Traddie approach has been called eccentric. Recently a Round Hole at a folk club with a PA system said my use of an electronic shruti box would be bound to offend purists. I could go on; in the end I give up, pretty much.

The Round Hole Orthodoxy has not only established itself within a generation, but justified its attitudes in terms of that orthodoxy which is, after all, just a back-water of popular music defined by the grave limits of its musical vision and imagination. Thus Folk Music might be just as well defined as easy listening MOR pop music strummed out on acoustic guitars by an ever ageing baby-boomer demographic who've been singing the same-old same-old since the fifties & sixties. Here in the senile dotage of The Revival, this is more evident than ever.