I like it all, Richard, if it's good. I like the good singer-songwriter material (both contemporary and older material), of which there is plenty. I like trad songs. I like sea shanties. I like instrumental stuff. I like jigs and reels. I like a bit of bluegrass now and them, a bit of blues now and then. I like it all. It's all folk to me. I never assumed that folk was ONLY singer-songwriter material..."a guy or a girl with a guitar, singing a song".

If your objection is to people who DO make that assumption, well fine. They would be as mistaken as people who only assume folk to be songs that were written over 300 years ago and played on a lute!

In either case you'd have people engaging in a sort of elitist snobbishness, wouldn't you?

If you are saying that there is a lot of self-indulgent, third-rate singer-songwriter material being written now...well, hey! I agree. But that is no reason to turn your nose up at the very good singer-songwriter material that is also being written now and dump it all in the same trashbin.

Your use of the term "snigger snogwriter" is deliberately offensive, it's snide, it's nasty, it's superior, and it does not reflect well on your attitude toward other people. Why don't you consider dropping it? It doesn't make any useful contribution to a friendly discussion about folk music. It's a deliberate taunt, and taunts are favored by schoolyard bullies, aren't they?

I am sure that there was any amount of dreadful stuff being churned out 300 years ago too...material that would now be considered "trad"....songs full of cliches about people dying of love with white doves sitting on their chest and so on...but most of that dreadful stuff has probably been lost to antiquity...disposable music...just like now. Today's singer-songerwriters are probably just as varied in their abilities and skills as those of former times...and a few of them really shine, while others are not so good. It's the stuff that really shines that is more likely to be remembered in the long run.

Today's singer-songwriter...if he or she is really good at it...is the composer of some future day's "trad" music. And so it goes.