I wonder why these song-writers are so keen to see their compositions accepted as 'folk'? It isn't exactly the best remunerated of musical genres.   Surely it couldn't be because they want an excuse to freeload off the folk scene by using it as a platform to perform, which they might otherwise have difficulty finding? If not, then it appears to me that they must see the term as conferring some additional status. Either way, I think they then owe a certain duty of care to folk music in its original sense.

I recognise Jim's concerns that the special qualities of traditional music will be overlooked and lost if the folk scene becomes dominated be people who have no real interest in it. I think much of the rancour this argument seems to generate could be avoided if more of the songwriters who wish to benefit from the 'folk' label were to show more respect for that point of view, and for traditional music itself.

My biggest difficulty is that the term 'folk' has become so debased as to be meaningless. It has ceased to become a useful label to help discover a particular type of music. When buying music meant ten minutes thumbing through the folk section of a record store that wasn't a problem, but now buying music means browsing through tens of thousands of albums on-line, and the term is used so broadly (especially by iTunes) that very little of what is there is the type of music I am seeking. It is problematic enough to label music anyway, and when a lebel ceases to have any practical use what is the point of it?

I think what is needed is more categories. We already use 'traditional' to mean what 'folk' used to, and new forms are adopting names like 'nu-folk' and 'alt-folk'. 'Contemporary' folk implies (to me at least)introverted singer-songwriters with guitars complaining about their relationships or proclaiming their spirituality, so perhaps we need more labels to cover different styles of modern songs under the broad folk umbrella. With these it would be easier to identify the specific music we want, and those who share Jim's point of view might be reassured that traditional music won't be obscured or debased.