There are multiple definitions of "folk music." A narrow one is to use the term to refer only to traditional material, and songs that either sound traditional or adapt the tradition. Hence, parodies of traditional songs and songwriters who write in traditional idioms (using only traditional instruments such as guitar, traditional melodic and chord structures, etc.) get accepted into even the narrow definition. A wider use of the term includes everything that a large record store files under folk, from Lomax field recordings to Greg Brown to Gillian Welch. It includes acoustic musicians and singer-songwriters.

Perhaps one of the things that is upsetting to many of us here is that others have tried to co-opt the use of "folk" and use the term in a way which specifically excludes traditional music. Alan Rowoth's e-mail list "folkmusic" and its related web site are an example of this. Some of us Mudcatters had to set up alternate getherings (such as the e-mail list "folktalk") because, instead of folk-purist-nazis canonizing the term to mean exclusively traditional material, singer-songwriters-nazis were reserving the term to mean exclusively NON-traditional material. So there are background turf wars to use of the term "folk" that you may not be aware of, and that may be a source of the heat of the reactions of some of us.

--Charlie Baum