As for the question of new music, consider the phrase Mary Cliff (who has hosted a folk music program on public radio for many years) uses to describe the stuff she plays: "Traditional music and music in the tradition." By that she means both the old stuff and newer stuff that sounds like the old stuff.

Seriously, there are several very strict definitions of "folk" or "traditional" music, and we've hashed them out repeatedly (ad nauseum, even), as you can see if you read some of the threads katlaughing linked to. Perhaps the strictest definition is music that has been passed down in the oral tradition (i.e., not written down) until its origins are obscured in the mists of time. But nowadays that doesn't happen -- technology has made it possible for huge quantities of music to be recorded and thus heard by a far wider audience than the troubadours of old could reach, and we know who wrote a lot of it. To me, that just means the old "folk process" of passing songs along has been speeded up and opened to a wider audience. So much the better, I say. Of course the bad gets recorded along with the good, but it's the good stuff that people remember and learn and pass along.

Stringsinger outlined some of the characteristics of folk music (simple, uncomplicated, etc.), and noted that it lasts because of a kind of natural selection. That's pretty much right, as far as it goes -- and I don't think I want to go a whole lot further, except to say that there are lots of other kinds of "folk" music besides the narrative ballads he mentioned (work songs, lullabyes, nonsense songs, to name a few). When Mary said "music in the tradition," she meant music that respects and emulates the sound and style of the old, traditional music passed down from generation to generation in the old-fashioned way.

Does that help at all?

Nancy