It is interesting to me that, through all our discussions of "what is Folk", a sort of consensus was achieved that it was music which had been passed down through and modified in the oral tradition.Dylan, Donovan,Paul Simon and others stand outside this definition as "singer/songwriters" whose work, while sometimes sounding like other songs that meet the above criteria, are not truly Folk.Now I have to ask, is there something about Rap that makes you all think it comes closer to this traditional definition than the above-mentioned singer/songwriters? Why is a song written by Tupac Shakur closer to Folk than one written by Neil Diamond? Is it perhaps because Tupac was black, therefore his music is somehow "representative" of Black Culture?

I am not denigrating Rap by saying itis not fit to be part of Folk (although I think most of it is obnoxious). I am saying, unless you base your opinion on Rap being some kind of "voice of the oppressed" and thereby grant it some special dispensation, it comes no closer to Folk at this time than Neil Diamond comes to Mozart. To go beyond that and say "these songs may someday become part of oral tradition, and are therefore Folk-in-process" is speculative nonsense on the level of saying that the pablum spooned out by the Spice Girls is potentially Folk if we just give it a chance.