"As we've said many times before, not everything is easily definable."
It has a clar enough definition - I've always found it workable as a rule-of-thumb.
Of course there are overlaps - but again, that is not what is being discussed here -
What is being suggested that the existing definition is no longer valid and must be abandon and replaced with - well, nothing really - and this by a tiny handful of self- interested people - you really should know as a researcher that that is nonsense and should it ever become accepted practice all the accumulated knowledge of our music would be meaningless - you`only need look at the damage to the club scene to see what can happen.
People need to say why such and such a song is folk - so far, it doesn't amount to a minuscule number of people saying "because I say it is" no rationale or even attempt at rational.
We already fave to pay performing rights taxes to put on an listen to what is supposed to be in the public domain - do you never wonder how much it would cost to run a club where Beatles (or Tom Jones Punkie) numbers are the order of the day.
As for folk ever being accepted as "the people's music" - forget that pipe-dream.
If we had a living, thriving tradition, there may be a point to all this, but our popular culture today is a passively received one, not a participatory one - deliberately so, because it is now a major industry.
Jim Carroll