If we exclude from our definition of folksong those songs which are written by a known author who claims copyright to his work, it would be safe to say, we aren't likely to have many new folksongs. I suggested in another thread that perhaps from now on, we'll have folk "styles". It certainly seems silly to look at the vast number of people who go to rock concerts and suggest that they are not "folk" audiences. When I was a child, a rag & bone man (junk collector) periodically came down our street in a horse drawn wagon, ringing a bell. We also had "tinkers" who sold kindling wood for the fireplace, along with other odds & ends, also in a horsedrawn wagon. They were incongruous with the times, remnants from a recently fading world. It's sometimes difficult for those of us who weren't around at the turn of the century to realize just how radically the world has changed within living memory (I'm not that old by the way, this was in Lancashire in the early 60's).

Bruce O. said fashions change, I think the folk boom of the 60's GaryD spoke of had many elements of fashion to it. I wouldn't be surprised if, fifty years from now, someone walking down the street who heard a couple of kids playing electric guitars & drums, singing new, topical songs of the day with a bo-diddly beat referred to them as "folk" musicians. There is currently a small fashionable boom in so called "Celtic" music, I bet your neighborhood record store has a little section, filled with Scots/Irish music recorded & overdubbed & doubledubbed with guitars, fiddles, violas, electric basses, synthesizers, pianos, bazoukis, whistles, flutes, didjeridoos and dobro slide guitars. The changing world is changing the definition of folk culture, and it's happening so fast that trying to define the day is like trying to predict the future. A day late.

Fashion of the day may on occasion lift our popularity, but I expect that folkies like us are largely a "niche market" from now on. Anyway, if I seem to have babbled on, it's bedtime for me, goodnight all.

Frank.