What do I do about John Martyn?

First time I saw him was in Leicester put on by the Leicester University FOLK club (who also put on Wizz Jones - Derek Brimstone - John Renbourn - and many others) and he played Spencer the Rover. Now I believe that's Trad and, (perhaps because I was in an educational establishment and they wouldn't get things wrong would they?) I thought he might be a folk musician along with some of the other people I liked at the time.

But apparently none of these people are folk at all. I must write to someone and complain. I reckon it must have confused a lot of people along with me because I've come across people who think that Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span, ISB, Pentangle (jazz band surely? The Cuckoo doesn't go like that), Jansch and Renbourn, Davy Graham and loads of other people had something to do with folk. James Taylor doing the Water is Wide - how dare he take so shamelessly from another genre? Roy Harper (singer songwriter). Dylan. Donovan.

I blame the educators who pulled the wool over my eyes for so long. If I'd only known. My sister who is a few years older than me used to go to well known folk clubs in London in the late 60's onwards and I think she might also have turned my view with all the wrong people that were put on at that time.

These folk people in the 60's and 70's had already gone way off track and have a lot to answer for as they cocked it up for two generations of people. Now seemingly they are looking for someone to blame and it's our fault - or the young musicians - or the people who buy Seth Lakeman CDs - or whoever.

Language does evolve and things change. The acid test used to be the 'man on the Clapham omnibus' and if anyone lives around Clapham or Wandsworth (and isn't in a Starbucks or Wine bar) and still uses public transport perhaps they could ask the man what he thinks.

Because of the definition of folk that I was brought up with (I went to see Judy Collins at the Albert Hall in 1969 and she sang Turn Turn Turn and all sorts of things that I thought were folk music) I haven't really had the angst that many who post here have. I have enough brain (and there is enough computer access) to know how to check out people before I go.

I went to see Jenna Reid recently (wonderful but is she folk music? - it was put on at the Early Music centre in York by the Black Swan Folk club - how misguided and confusing is that); I enjoyed listening to Christine Kydd and Janet Russell singing on a tape I have (I think that is folk music - but they do a version of the Bluebell Polka which has just thrown me again); I have been to our weekly (folk? - it's what people who come choose to label it) gathering and have had a bucket of unaccompanied song, Ewan MacColl song, load of fiddle tunes and then I had to go and cock it up by playing a Tom Waits song (Boden and Spiers got away with it so why not?). And I liked the story in Joe Boyd's book about Taj Mahal, Bob Copper and the Watersons which suggested that most of them have some grasp of what sort of tradition they have hold of.

I am a lover of music trapped inside a wrong definition. I'm going to go and lie down now and see if I can sleep with all this confusion racing through my head.