Jim:


'Who "in the rest of the world" and to what has it been changed?'

I'm thinking of the vast, music-listening public beyond the "folk world". They are constantly being told that some new singer or band or phenomenon is folk music, and why should they argue? So anything acoustic is now folk. A lot of music that references late 60s psychedelia is thought of as a type of folk. Any music that is remotely rootsy falls within the folk category.


'Even if I were to allow a body as predatory and self-serving as 'the music industry' to change my concept of a music I am familiar with, whose interests would it serve to accept their definition (which is what)?'

I think, realistically, it doesn't matter whether we within the folk community accept these eternal definitions or not. What I'm trying to say is that the music industry communicates with many, many times more people than the relatively small folk community. As they persist in using "folk" as a catch-all term, it develops and evolves beyond whatever we might understand into something else, or many somethings else. And it becomes less and less useful as a descriptive term.


'The general populace has no conception of the term 'folk';'

I disagree, Jim. The term has been used a lot over the past 10 or 15 years to describe all sorts of music - just because the general populace's understanding of what folk is may be different from our definition doesn't mean their conception(s) is the one which will eventually die off. As I've said, there are lots more of them than there are of us.


"By accepting the singer-songwriters (or anybody who choses to describe themselves as 'folk') into the definition how then are we going to relate our music to the terms 'folklore' or 'folktales' or the hundreds of books which have been and are still being published under the banner 'folk'?"

Actually, this is clearly problematic. I kind of feelthat the use of 'folk' to describe music has become almost seperate as an entity from folklore, folk tales and folk art - largely because these entities have not been commodified within popular culture to anything like the same degree as folk music.


"On a more personal note, is any change going to make it easier for me to find the music I (or anybody) would like to go to a folk club and listen to occasionally? On the contrary - it would be accepting the mis-use of the term by making it meaningless."

I'm afraid I see this as a lost argument. We can't make people stop "mis-using" the word, and at the end of the day it doesn't belong to us.

"The only winners in all of this would be the usurpers of the term who have been largely responsible for the present mess the folk scene is at present and who, so far at least, haven't even bothered to produce a viable alternative (at present it seems to range from "whatever I choose to call 'folk' to 'anything that is presented at a folk club'."

Again, I'm not sure what you could do about this. The "userpers" will use the word and define folk however they choose. And this willcontinue to undermine the usefulness of 'folk' as a descriptive term for music.

Have a look at this:

Who Gives a Folk?

From the website above:
"In the last few years, however, a revival of English folk music has seen a plethora of new folk styles sprout up, from nu-folk to twisted folk, from Bat for Lashes to Tunng and even twindie, a new generation seems to be giving folk new meaning and an unexpected lease of life. Has folk finally left behind its parochial, twee image?"

IMHO, this event is a perfect example of the fact that we have no control over these debates. Apart from Chris Wood, is there anyone on the panel that strikes you as a leading voice on the folk scene? The sort of people who ought to be spearheading such a debate? I certainly don't think so...but look at how folk is being defined, and the sorts of bands being namechecked. Do they mean folk to you? They don't to me. But they do to other people. And they're a lot sexier and more media-friendly than the kind of stuff that you and I might define as folk. Moreover, the music you and I would describe as folk is written off here as parochial and twee. So how on earth do you fight it?