Elsie, I read the essays on why a more rigorous definition was needed, I just did not agree with them. Not that I don't believe in rigor. As a scientist/engineer, I am well aquainted with it., and a firm believer in it, in its proper context - academic study. I just don't think that DT, or the record store, or the majority of folk festivals, can or should be judged in the same maner as the academic forum.

If you will permit an analogy. If tommorow I submitted a paper entitled "Freindship Patterns in Urban Secondary Schools" to a sociological journal, I'd best have a clear and rigorous definition of the word "friendship". On the other hand, if I refer to someone as a "friend of mine" in a casual dinner conversation, I a permitted a much looser definition of the word freind. This is what I meant by "we don't usually need our lexicon of musical terms to be very rigorous and well defined."

Also, that "some musicians attempt banal garbage at folk festivals" is irrelevant to the question at hand. Both the academic or common use definition of 'folk music' are categorical judgements. Whether the music is well done or enjoyable is a value judgement. Music can be simultaneously "folk" and "banal" without contradiction.

So I did not mean my description as cute. I really meant it in the following way. Unless you are talking as a strict ethnomusicologist, the only way to get a good idea of what constitutes full range of folk music as the term is used today, is to go to folk festivals and folk clubs and get the gestalt for yourself. Its like the supreme court justice who once said he couldn't define pornography, but he knew it when he saw it.

On a personal note, I did not find you post grumpy. It was a bit condescending and patronizing though. For example, your comment to me "I wish you would re-read it...slowly" was meant to imply that I was either too lazy or to stupid to agree with you. It could easily have been dropped without doing violence to the otherwise reasonable ideas you wanted to express.

Best Regards

Jack

Peace to all... Elsie