Maybe this should become an annual event, Like catching the greased pig at old fashioned county fairs. I think that the age of mass commmunication has completely ended folksong as it has always existed, now we have folk styles perhaps? Bluegrass, generally accepted as a folk style, didn't exist a hundred years ago, and rockabilly keeps popping up amongst the young'uns. I feel Joe's description of folksong is pretty much in synch. with mine, but it's hard to imagine how any new songs that are succesful enough to endure will lose their known authorship, along with all that implies.

It would be nice if performers could be more precise about what they play, nowadays if I see in the newspapers that So and So, folksinger/songwriter/guitarist etc. is playing, it doesn't tell me a lot. Or one I've seen frequently "Folk music concert" with So and So. I often simply don't go, my free time is too rare to gamble.

Frank the-more-I-think-about-it-the-more-I-grumble.