Unnamed Guest,
"The 1954 definition eh?"
Yes, things have changed since 1954, one of the greatest changes being that in the intervening period we have lost virtually all the singers on which the definition was based, and they have not been replaced by new ones.
Folk song was based - as WLD nicely puts it - on the:
"relationship of the broad mass of people, and the artist who is one of them, expressing something of their society."
The song tradition, as an expression and representation of community and society, has ceased to exist and the members of those communities have become recipients of rather than participants in their culture.
Even back then, with a few exceptions, the singers on whom the definition was based were remembering the songs rather than singing them. In the post-war period, Harry Cox sang only for collectors and visiting folkies; this was the case with Phil Tanner also, (and for the fellow residents of the old people's home in Penmaen); Cecilia Costello, at home – maybe (no information).
Walter Pardon described how the tradition he remembered, died out before he joined the army in the early 1940s (that we have his magnificent family repertoire is due entirely to the fact that he started writing it down in 1948).
In Ireland, where the singing tradition lasted somewhat longer, the old singers were recalling songs they had not sung for decades (I am talking about the English language tradition; the Gaeilge one is somewhat different)). Collector Tom Munnelly (with 22000 songs to his credit), as early as 1975, described his work as being a "race with the undertaker", and by the end of the eighties the race was over and his field work was more-or-less confined to recording revival-driven events like singing week-ends and festivals.
There were some pockets of resistance; the Travellers clung on to their songs longer, mainly due to social conditions, but Pat and I all but witnessed the demise of the Irish Travellers' singing tradition (sometime between the summer of 1973 and Easter 1975) when they all got portable televisions in their vans and stopped singing around the open fire.
The folk clubs, rather than being part of the singing tradition, were life-support systems where the older songs (and very occasionally, the odd source singer) could still be heard. But even this was more-or-less swamped by the influx of singer/songwriters, whose songs were coming into existence still-born, thanks to their introspective, private nature (and to the reliance on copyright laws – don't believe me – look in on 'PRS / Gestapo' thread and see them counting the beans).
It was the dream of MacColl, and others who were creating new songs using the old forms, that this could one day re-establish a tradition of song-making as an expression of 'ordinary' people's lives and aspirations, but it didn't happen. WLDs "relationship of the broad mass of people, and the artist" never re-emerged, not with the singers of traditional songs, nor with the singer songwriters. Nowadays the singing only takes place in freemason-like folkie gatherings.
The 1954 definition may need fine-tuning, but a total re-definition, I believe, would be a revisionist exercise in the re-writing of history.
To those who have suggested that the definition was an invention of dry academics – it wasn't.
It was the thoughtful end-result of the work of people who were not afraid of getting the dirt of fieldwork under their fingernails; Sharp who asthmatically wheezed his way around Southern England an up the Appalachians along with trusty assistant Maud Karpeles, (a collector in her own right in Newfoundland); to Kidson; Broadwood, Gilchrist, Greig, Moeran, Butterworth, Delargey, Ó'Súilleabháin, Vaughan-Williams Grainger........... and all the others who didn't confine their activities to sitting in folk-clubs and were prepared to 'rove out' a little further than the bar to refill their pints, (and were not afraid to open - or even write the occasional book).
Here's to 'em all, I say
Jim Carroll