Freight, Let me publically apologize. Especially since you are a new member and don't have the history many of us have. I definately should have treated you better. I'm sorry.

Nicole put her finger on it (she has a way of doing that) when she observed that this is really a “what is folk” discussion. Those of us who've been here a while have grown tired of that endless, pointless discussion.

Folk music has many definitions but the two most often cited come from the music industry and academia. The term is useful as a marketing buzzword and, for scholars in the dicipline, the academic definition has some meaning. But for musicians—most of the people posting here—music is art and there aren't any rules beyond what pleases the artist. If it pleases listeners, the artist may be rewarded. If listeners aren't pleased, it may still be pleasing to the artist. How are we to make rules governing the creation of art?

I think it makes more sense to discuss the product of art—in this case the performance—than to discuss the tools. We can argue that a particular rendition of Barbara Allen by a heavy metal band lacks the sensitivity of a simpler rendition using lute and a single trained tenor voice but that doesn't mean it's impossible to create a sensitive performance using an electric instrument. You may not want to buy that performance, hell, I may not want to buy it either, but our personal taste doesn't invalidate it as art.

      - Mark