Thank you to everyone who is contributing to this!!!! -- it is exactly what I was interested in -- I was a bit afraid that it would descend into fighting over a definition, but instead it is lovely to read. I like so many of the thoughts -- like the idea of being present with the music. Someone who always stuns me is the ballad singer Dillard Chandler (he shows up in the original John Cohen film on the High Lonesome Sound), who is a disaster as a human being, and in the film is essentially a bum -- but he is carrying around all these ballads in his head, as if he were a vehicle for the music. He is nothing, really: the music in him is everything. It occurred to me that he was a musician because the music was using him, rather than him using the music -- I think of Harvey Reid talking on his web site about how people who make music are part of this ancient tradition, well, universal tradition, and that links them to all the other musicmakers. Maybe musicmakers is a good alternative.

yours,

Peter T.