I have never been a purist. What is Folk music? Songs about people. What is a Folksinger? A person who sings songs about people. To write songs whether it be in the 1890s or the 1990s, is to write about events, emotions, or people. Most songs can be converted to acoustic so that the folk musician can convey what the songwriter has to say. That is part of the art. The singer has a disadvantage if he is not a writer in that writers are generally good storytellers. However, many songwriters are good lyric poets, not musicians. This trend has taken music as a whole downhill. We have singers who can't write and writers who can't sing. That's what the purist musician would tell you. Did the performers you mentioned in one of the other posts sell out? No. They did what they had to to survive in a business that is very cutthroat. There is some very good "folkmusic" out there in the pop and C&W market right now, but You have to listen for it. I used to feel that I was selling out if I sang a song that did not fit into what I called the folk music category, but soon I realized that I was only limiting myself to the quality of songs in my own collection, and some of our rock musicians have a lot to say. Folk music is how you define it. My idea of a folksinger is a person who can sit and sing to me, and tell me a story with just with his/her voice' and an insrument, preferrably accoustic. Considering all the options out there today, I'd say even that definition is biased. If we start limiting ourselves to what we listen to, because a folk musician does not both write and sing, we'll deprive ourselves of quality music, as well as of quality lyrics. I know songwriters who will not sing, but fortunately there are people out there who will sing their songs for them. Yes, there is a very big distinction between singer/songwriters and folkies, but there is also a distinction between folksingers and songwriters, and just because a person can't do both doesn't mean he/she should be ignored. Being a folksinger is a time-honored tradition around the world. They entertained, brought news, and shared their songs whereever they went, and they were not all multitalented. When coffeehouses were big in the sixties, we listened to everybody, bad or good, because they all had something to say. That is true folkmusic.

Dan