"Jim, so we're happy to deviate from 1954 which does specify 'oral' to allow modern forms of transmission, yes"
This has never been an issue
If you read the '54 definition, it says:
"Folk music is the product of a musical tradition that has been evolved through the process of oral transmission."
The ambiguity of that statement is its Achilles heel - it is not clear whether the process is the result of oral transmission or the music itself - you can transmit song orally, you can't transmit music.
As far as we know, literacy has long played a part in the transmission of folk songs, so there is no great problem when music is transmitted in other ways.
It is not really a major part of its definition.
The important features of folk son as I see them are the fact that they belong to no-one, can be claimed and used by everyone as their own - certainly not the case with newly composed songs.
Probably the most important feature of folk songs is the fact that they are virtually all universal in their structure - anybody can identify with the situations they throw up in some way or other - it's why I believe the two modern songs I cited would be good 'folk' candidates.
I've never worked in a dye-works like Pete Smith did, but when I worked in London I dismantled literally hundreds of cancerous causing asbestos-filled storage heaters - I worked in factories where the entire heating systems were made up of asbestos-wrapped hot water pipes - can't tell you how many bricks I shat when the health report on the risks of industrial and domestic asbestos was published.
That's why I had no problem with identifying with a song which was outside of my immediate experience.
Our folk song repertoire is made up of such identifiable situations, that's what makes them universal and to a degree immortal.
Very few new songs have that double quality of specific universality - dealing with a particular situation yet at the same time, open to general identification.
"that a new song can become 'folk' if we don't know who wrote it and other people sing it?"
No we can't - the authorship of many songs that have become 'folk' are known yet they have been taken up and re-identified with by communities and have become part of the culture of those communities.
Quite often, as in the case of the MacColl songs I mentioned, the original maker is not known by the people who have chosen to identify with it.
As far as the 'Heavy Metal' posting goes, I was responding to what I believed to be on offer as 'folk' - certainly fits the 'non-definition' definition some clubs choose to put on.
If that is 'folk' the term has become meaningless.
A question - if some people dislike the stuff that brought us into this music so much - why do they with topo associate their music with it- or are they setting out to destroy the old music and replace it with theirs?
Just asking
Sorry - started this a couple of hours ago and am stuck uprooting New Zealand flax before is pisses with rain
Will post this and come back later.