I can't, for the life of me, see any similarities between most singer-songwriter music and folk music. They seem like almost complete opposites to me. Why are they usually discussed in the same forums and performed on the same stages? I have noticed that if you give a singer-songwriter a budget you get a pop band or a country band doing pop songs or country songs. If you give a traditional folk musician a budget, you may get a rock sound, but you still have a traditional folk song. Why is Jethro Tull playing an acoustic song not considered folk music? In what way is Soundgarden Unplugged different than any other singer-songwriter's band?

I agree that we need definitions in order to have intelligent discussions. Without lines (big, wide grey lines) dividing genres, we have no basis for disucussion. Why not just have a general Music Forum where we could all argue about whether or not any particular sound is music. I, too, am tired of hearing about the damn horse. By that definition, classical, rock, Broadway, pop, country, and punk are all folk music. Dumb.

I've come to define folk music from a musical standpoint, rather than a historical, traditional, or process oriented viewpoint. By this I mean that traditional folk music from western Europe and America has a certain melodic sound that is generally not found in newly composed music, unless the music is composed by someone who is firmly rooted in some tradition. I don't mean that all these traditions sound alike. But traditional melodies get worked over by so many people that one can, after a while, usually tell whether or not a song is traditional. The same is true of the lyrics. I have no problem calling a newly composed song traditional if it sounds traditional. That will almost always mean that it was written by a person who is part of the tradition and who is writing from that musical standpoint. If it fits in musically and lyrically with the other songs in that tradition, and if the other musicians in that tradition play the song, what does it matter when it was written.

I am also not particularly concerned about where or for what purpose a song or tune is played. I have heard a lot of people say that traditional folk music is not music that is arranged and performed, but rather is played in less formal situations. That would mean that if I am sitting around the house playing music with my friends, I am playing traditinal folk music, but if I take the same song on stage with an arrangement I am no longer playing traditional music. This strikes me a bit silly. It may be speaking to a definition of tradition, but not to a definition of music. And what about dances? Surely playing for dancers is about as traditional an activity as we can find. But I sometimes get paid for playing at dances -- am I partly traditional and partly not?

I'm also not worried about what instruments get used for folk music. As I said earlier, you may get a rock sound but you still have a traditional folk song. What difference does it make to the melody or the words if different instruments are used? The melody and words remain the same. How would we ever decide which instruments are appropriate and which are not? I play the cittern, which is firmly rooted in Irish traditional music, and has been for all of 30 years or so. People have been using electric guitars for traditinal music for just as long. Traditional folk music is a living, breathing thing. Its players are always going to pick up the current instruments of the day.

I don't think that any of the traditions were started by people to said, "Hmm . . . I think I'll start a musical tradition today." I suspect that they were just folks playing the music they heard and liked on whatever instruments came to hand. I have always thought that learning everything there is to know about a musical tradition and then trying to make your playing conform to your learning is an essentially scholarly and academic approach to traditional music -- which is in its essence non-scholarly. As such it is as much an antithesis of traditonal folk music as singer-songwriters are. Perhaps a kid playing old tunes he found in a book on a synthesizer is more traditional than an American urbanite who can talk about and play the styles of every famous Irish fiddler. If traditional music is local music, why should we play music from some other locale?

Someone said earlier that mixing and matching traditions is harmful to traditional folk music, and tended to homogenize the things that make folk music interesting. I agree to a point, but where do you think cajun music came from? Or Appalachian? Or blues? Or bluegrass? Musicians in the real world are going to mix and match music that they hear and like, and some of the hybrids are going to take and some are not. In today's world, the music we hear and like can come from all over the world instead of from a couple of counties, so the mixing will be more radical than it was in the past. I don't really think this is going to destroy the individual traditions. There are plenty of traditionalists around. I don't have any problem with world fusion music, although I tend to like the root tradtions better.

John Peekstok