There's plenty of (shall we say) 'largely-acoustic-composed-music-of-the-era-since-the-end-of-World-War-Two' that gets called folk either by the media, or its fans or detractors (for some people f**k will always be a four letter word), or even sometimes its authors. Some of it I don't particularly think of as folk music. That's not to say it isn't, however, just that I personally struggle to connect with it as such.

I'd be loathe, in the 21st century, to be bound by a definition of folk music that is a) absolutely synonymous with the definition of traditional music and b) assumes that people and their music and people's understanding and perception of their music is fixed and unchanging. So... I'd favour having a fairly focused definition of traditional music, but just going with the flow as far as folk music is concerned and accepting that it no longer has that same meaning it might once have had - however much some of us might want to turn back the clock. I also think that whilst the definition of traditional music remains fairly fixed, the definition of folk might vary from country to country and generation to generation.

Also, if comparatively recently composed songs like 'England in Ribbons', 'Fire and Wine', 'The Father's Song', 'The World Turned Upside Down' and 'Traitor's Love' (to name a few favourites) aren't folk songs, I'm buggered if I know what they are. The people who wrote them appear to be folk singers, too. to add to the confusion...

Finally, I reserve the right to contradict myself completely in a single thread, as I have in this one. Shows I'm taking stuff in...

Cheers

Nigel