I just led people in singing We Shall Overcome with my gospel quartet at two programs celebrating Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement. I went back to a Baptist hymnal to pick up more verses, and the hymn is identified as a "folk hymn." I think that you'll find a whole section of hymns and gospel songs in the Alan Lomax book, Folk Songs Of North America. I put gospel, the old hymns that have passed into the tradition, blues, cajun music and other regional music like Tex-Mex under the umbrella of folk music. If we're not too purist about it, someday punk rock and rockabilly and earlier forms of rock and roll probably should fit under the umbrella, too. Joe is right... it depends on how you define folk music. It it's songs that lazy people sing and don't bother to learn the words to until it is "processed" into variations, then folk music will never stop being created.

Wooly Bully is one of my all-time favorite folk songs. :-)

Jerry