Bill, its important to have differences of opinion and equally that others respect those differences.I wandered into the 'Cat last December, so I feel I'm still kinda new. I've learned to search the trad and (most of the time) do blue clickys correctly. I have developed a tremendous amount of respect for the musical knowledge and devotion of the regular 'Catters (some of the politics is squirrelly, but thats politics).
The group I'm in plays traditional irish music like a bunch of Americans. If for no other reason than (1) we don't know any better, (2) the audience seems to like it and (3) we're a bunch of Americans. Occasionally we stumble into a fellow performer who is always complimentary about what we do, but never fails to point out that we're not doing traditional Irish music. It is beyond our abilities to discern why he's telling us this. We're having a ball and people are getting to hear songs they normally wouldn't come across.
So a thread like this sparks my interest, especially with the parallel Floyd thread. Art Thieme's response was troubling to me as he is one of the Old Timers and I am generally curious if there is definition of folk (or "traditional Irish" for that matter). So I searched the database.
Please excuse me. I have stumbled late onto a discussion that gnawed your arm off bored two years ago! Although I can say with absolute certainity that I still don't "know" what folk is, I certainly have a new appreciation for the previos attempts made to define and categorize.
With all that, here is a thread Alice in Montana started. It'll take a while to read, but provides a good place for all wishing to discuss this to ground themselves. I'd even suggest permathread status.
Ed