Ron..you ask Dick Greenhaus "Dick, can I ask you a question - what do you consider "folk music"?"

I do not presume to speak for him, but the DT database is a pretty good indication of his general view, I'd guess...*grin*.

It is VERY heavily oriented toward traditional music...with songs by known authors included when they seem to exhibit many of the characteristics of traditional music. I have argued for years that a working definition of folk/trad could be obtained by examining the DT, looking at all the songs which everyone would agree are 'folk', and asking what common characteristics such songs share.

Those criteria could be used when looking at a song about which there is doubt.
Yes, yes...of course there would still be gray areas and songs where there was disagreement whether it was "written mostly for commercial purposes" or whether it "had a melodic style too complex to be trad" or whether the subject matter was 'universal' or 'personal navel gazing'....etc.

   We'd still never get a perfect, universally agreed on list of NEW stuff...but the very exercise of EVALUATING the common characteristics of the OLD stuff would help un-muddy some points.

Dick & Susan have created a database that DOES show what the more 'picky' of us fossils think is a good starting place. To them...and to guys like me, it is 'almost' intuitive what should be listed in a 'folk' database. This database is one of a few 'lines in the sand' that help keep alive the very idea that there is a difference between 'folk' and 'faux pholk' that gets labeled because it's such a nice, short, convenient word.