Nigel ~ "Sugar Magnolia" is quite an excellent song, and part of perhaps the Dead's best-ever album, "American Beauty."

Not to be too pedantic about it, but it may be pertinent to note that it was written by Bobby Weir with his lyricist-partner John Barlow. It's not a Hunter-Garcia song, and so not an example of that subgenre of GD songs composed to echo a lot of folk-tradition phrasology (musical as well as linguistic phrases).

Jim ~ You're right, of course, that age alone does not a folksong make. However, there are certainly at least a few cases where an old-enough song eventually becomes "traditional," thanks to its widespread popularity, being kept alive by the singing of "folks" who may not all know the authorship/origin, etc.

Certainly, every song was written by someone, at some past time, whether or not that person publically claimed credit at the time or took steps to "immortalize" his/her name for the future. "Anonymous" traditional songs are simply songs whose authorship has been forgotten.

I was arguing that some of today's music, of whose provenance we are currently well aware, may at some time in the future (even if only the far future) become anonymous, and therefore "traditional." Such a thing could happen ~ and in fact is almost sure to happen, if only in a very few cases ~ when a given song is so intrinsically memorable that knowledge of the song outlives all memory of the songwriter.

Sedayne ~ Right on! You are quite correct to point out that what it's really all about is "singing your heart out." When a singer chooses a song because it has deep meaning to her/himself, and then is able to convey that meaning to listeners, "live" and face-to-face, that's folk music ~ regardless of the origin of the song used by the singer to create that emotional/artictic experience.