"everything is in flux in our society. everything changes very fast. language reflects that.
"
What happens at your 'folk' club does not represent "society" only what happens in your club - you have no impact whatever in the outside world ad how the rest of us choose to communicate with one another.
If you want to communicate outside your particular bubble you use the language we all do
If I needed to find out what folk song was (assuming I hadn't spent half a century actively working at it, organising folk clubs, singing folk songs, lecturing and writing about it - and most of al, spending three decades collecting it from people who are part of a long chain that reaches back centuries in passing on the songs) - I would simply reach for one of the hundreds of books labelled "folk songs".
If all this no longer applies or if it has changed in any way - tell me what it has become - you and your buddies are awfully shy in passing on your secret - it seems to range from "what I choose to call it", through "what happens at our club" to "it doesn't have any definition".
C'mon Al - give us a clue - show us yours!!!
By the way - one clown suggested that we have to abandon the term "traditional" as the Buddy Holly/Elvis wannabes are "traditional now because they change a few words.
Jim Carroll