I grew up listening to American folk music. The best resource around at the time was the Library of Congress field recordings, much of what was done by the Lomaxes. Since then, the definition has changed by those who came in through the door of traditional music and went in different directions. I found that soon the academic and ethnomusicological side of American folk music was at once stuffy and fascinating. The music itself divorced from scholarly pronouncements about it was vibrant and alive. The Harry Smith Anthology of Folkways Records as well as the Lib.OfC. provided a foundation for interest. The big problem is that the academics and musicologists couldn't get their heads around the idea that in order for the interest in this music to survive, it had to be participatory. For the "scalp collectors" this proved to be unsatisfactory because it disturbed the "specimen" in it's natural habitat. I gave up deciding I was a folk singer. I wasn't from an indigenous area whereby my music could be collected so I became a working musician/singer.
I still maintain a great appreciation for the African-American and Anglo-American traditions as well as other ethnic areas which are not explored much. Much of this music was never meant for the concert stage. Some of it spilled over into professional show business.
What I think has happened is that those who came through the popularization of folk music in the late 50's and early 60's broadened the definition to fit their contributions as singer/songwriters, pop folkies and protest singers. I think a similar thing has happened in the British Isles and unfortunately for American folkies as well as British Isles, (Irish, Welsh, Scottish, Northern England) much of all of this has become kind of self-conscious. Now we have a polarity between the so-called "traddies" and the others.   One way around this dilemma I think is to start a conversation about stylistic aspects of lyrics and music as applied to the accepted traditional forms. It would be interesting to talk about the blues influences in bluegrass (Monroe) for instance or the development of the city blues from the rural blues (McKinley Morganfield and Lightning Hopkins) and also how much of the early blues found it's way into urban rock through Sunn Records and through Led Zeppelin via Page or Stones. It would be interesting to talk about how early jazz from the 1920's found it's way into the Piedmont picking styles of blues musicians and what really defines and differentiates the Delta blues. Vocal styles of the traditional rural areas of the Anglo-American tradition and how it varies in its performance from the African- American manner of communal participation would be interesting. Contrast for example the stringent approach of the Sacred Harp hymn singing to the Black gospel looser approach. The crossover from the traditional string band music of the 20's to the contemporary bluegrass music would be instructive to discuss. Oddly, many musicians in the British Isles seem to know more about these things then the average American folkie. Maybe because there is a propensity for academia in the Brit approach although that might be generalizing too much. I would welcome these kind of discussions more.

Frank