Martin..I have used the music bin metaphor for years...but a bit differently. The whole point of different bins to to allow people to find the music they want...if the store only has a few categories, i.e., if the 'folk' bin has everything vaguely related of derived from traditional music, how is someone going to easily locate the New Lost City Ramblers mixed into all the singer-songwriter stuff?....Lazy music store managers should not define the categories!

Please understand...it is not some insult or snobbery to NOT be defined as 'folk'. I don't condemn someone else's music, only their broad, sweeping nomenclature! There is much that is quite good that simply needs its own label. Bluegrass, Blues, Native American, etc., can ALL lay claim to some 'folkness', but they are NOT what the term was coined to described.

"isn't a song like Yellow Submarine already a tradtional children's song? "...well..(let's see if I can condense an hours rambling into a short comment)..yeah, in one sense, it is...but 'traditional' simply has a more specific, narrow connotation for some purposes. I just don't see "traditional children's song" as the sam as "children's song from the tradition" "Yellow Submarine" and "Tisket-a-Tasket" all the same category...tsk!

This whole discussion should be based on what is clear and 'practical'...not on accusations of snobbery or on artifical distinctions made by a commercial music industry which wants buzzword categories for its own convenience.

There is no law about all this, but like Jeri, I need a word that describes what **I** want to refer to, without taking a whole paragraph.