Is there an oral tradition any more in the age of print, recording, and the world wide web? Where would you go to find it?

If not, then the "canon" of folk song would seem to be closed, like the canon of baroque music, for example. (Of course one could always turn up a new Handel symphony, but that's rare these days.) True "folkies" are the gatekeepers of an aged and aging and fairly closed corpus.

If there is still an oral tradition, then knowing the author of a song shouldn't stop the song from being considered a folk song, if it has entered the oral tradition.

But what do I know? I LIKE Tom Paxton. And Don McLean. And... well, you get the idea.

Alex
O..O
=o=