Going way back to Marc B's 24th April comment about folk's propensity toward being "liked," i definitely think that it has a mighty pull to it. When i was in high school, i sang an a capella Irish song ("When a man's in love" off of a Chieftains album) in the midst of the pop and rock and cheezy taped accompaniments of the rest of the talent show. Being as bold and brazen as i was (am?...nah), i did it just cause i loved it and didn't really think it'd go over well, but didn't really give a damn either--and so i got up, i sang, and got a whole auditorium of rather disrespectful, talking students to be quiet for a few minutes. I was sort of shocked by the response, and a few years later, i still am wowed by the hush that occasionally falls over rowdy bars when i get up in the midst of an open mic and my voice and I start a ballad. I don't know where the magick of the songs comes from--maybe it's just that particular arrangements of notes have this amazing enrapturing effect on people. But come on, that's not it...and i guess we're coming up to my meek little sort-of-definition of "folk" to add into the thread. I think that the draw of folk, its magick, comes from the lives of everyone who has sung it. They're life songs, and they pick up a little bit of each person as they're passed down through the years, whether they're sung while rambling down the road town to town, doing the barn chores, vacuuming or on the stage. Regardless of specific story scheme, they contain one of the pure human sentiments that are timeless and inherent in each feeling being, and begin to develop a geneology of their own...q heard the song from p who learned it from o who got it from n.... and it gets its own history of people who were touched by it. i think that's what it is for me, anyway, and i also think that i just ended up writing a very longwinded explaination of someone else's concise thought (JB, maybe?) nevermind me...i'll just stick to singing. sorry for the ramble...