This thread seems low on quantity, but pretty high on quality and it has got me thinking. I am not really airing hard and fast opinions, just asking aloud the questions which I often ask myself.
I have mixed feelings about what you are saying Bob. For sure, a vigorous folk culture does not need the approval of the authorities. It can also be used as a focus for scorn or even outright opposition to authority as well. That is a quality which I also find attractive. I do not think it is the main distinguishing characteristic of it though.
That leads me on to what Michael and Azizi were discussing. For me the spirit of folk music is more about passing a guitar to and fro and singing to each other the songs which we like. In fact, simply doing what we did when you visited me last year. Marion did the same a year previously. For me, she embodies very accurately what a real folk singer is. She travels around, collects stories and then sings them to people face to face. I would obviously include Art Thieme in that description to. It is neither here nor there whether he still does this or how old his songs are (it does not matter one way or the other to me). The point is, that the stories/bits of stories/gags are passed on in a social context.
Azizi's point - as ever - is well made and well taken. I see the drip feed commercial control of entertainment media as a huge threat to the folk culture. Technology is another issue. I actually met both Marion and Michael in the virtual world before I met them in the real one. I have also learned songs from the Mudcat which I would not have learned otherwise. It is obviously not hi tech which threatens our culture. Indeed, modern technology makes it possible for people like us to make albums and tell people about it who might be interested. That was not possible twenty years ago, without crawling to record companies and signing oneself into considerable debt.
For me, Bruce Springsteen is essentially a ballad singer. What baffles me, is that many who buy his records and enjoy his story telling skills would scoff at a ballad singer singing about the lives of his own neighbours in a local pub. I think that is sad, because that is the sort of ballad singer I want to hear.