"Woody Guthrie, for example, dealt almost exclusively in his own songs, but no one among his contemporaries ever found it necessary to protest "but that's not folk music!" "

That's not exactly true! Believe it or not, in the late 1940's there were people who complained that people like Guthrie were not tradtional folk singers, and if you want to follow a definition - they were right. Which to my mind shows how definitions can be too inflexible.

A couple of years ago we presented Pete Seeger at our campus. He was 88 at the time, and gave a 1 hour presentation of songs and stories that spanned all sorts of genres. At intermission, an elderly man using a walker came up to me and complained that Pete did not offer folk songs because one of the songs he sang was "Somewhere Over the Rainbow". Pete's presentation of the song was powerful and there were few dry eyes in the house. Yet this individual missed the beauty of the performance simply because the song did not fit his definition.

Don't get me wrong, definitions are important - but we should not allow it to limit and folk music should only be a loose framework. The content and commuity for which the song was created is more of a determining factor of whether or not it is folk...............