Hmm. . . . I just posted this on another thread, "Horse", but I think it would actually be more germane here, so I'll go ahead and post it for your consideration:—

I'm currently a short way into Romancing the Folk: Public Memory and American Roots Music by Benjamin Filene, (The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill and London, 2000). Benjamin Filene, a cultural historian with the Minnesota Historical Society, has obviously done his homework and he gives some pretty interesting insights into why "folk song" is so hard to define. The lack of definition that we seem to be stuck with comes pretty much as a result of the different preconceptions that the major collectors and compilers such as Child, Sharp, and the Lomaxes held, further compounded (confounded?) by record company executives and promoters back in the Twenties and Thirties trying to make a buck from their new categories of "race" and "hillbilly" music.

The first person on record to use the expression "folk song" (volkslieder) was German philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder (late eighteenth century). Von Herder was referring to music of the rural peasant class. But "rural peasant class" is not politically correct in this day and age, nor is it necessarily applicable to the modern world, so his definition just won't do anymore. Percy and Scott were collecting "ancient poetry." They tended to tidy up what they considered "crude" or "illiterate." Child seemed to think that there was no American folk music other than modern corruptions of ancient British songs and that anything much after the fourteenth century was adulterated by modern influences. He was very selective (a monumental and exceedingly valuable achievement, nonetheless). Sharp was looking for his romantic concept of the pastoral England of two centuries ago and thought he'd found it in the Southern Appalachians. His informants sang a lot of stuff to him that he didn't take down, because he didn't regard it as "authentic." So he, too, was very selective (but he did take down the tunes). The Lomaxes were looking for living, breathing examples of folk singers (in Leadbelly, they thought they'd found the Holy Grail)—and then coached them on how to be "authentic." And—blasphemy alert!!—our usually accepted canon of authenticity, Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music is a compilation of commercial records from the Twenties and Thirties.

I'm only a couple chapters into the book, but it's absolutely fascinating and highly enlightening. Obviously, folk music is the proverbial elephant, and everyone else, including the "experts," are blind gropers. Whenever the "horse" schtick comes up, it's a tip-off that someone's trying to toss in a ringer. But just because trying to define "folk song" is like trying to nail Jello to the wall doesn't mean we shouldn't keep trying.

Don Firth