The difficulty comes in trying to wrap it all up in taxonomy, which is part & parcel of the same cultural autism to which Folk, as a concept rather than an actuality, aspires. The other side to this of course is people, like myself, for who taxonomy is anathema and the 1954 definition is just so much academic wank, preferring to believe that a) what happens happens and b) things either is or they ain't *, in which case, I would suggest, that the Horse Definition as supplied by Louis Armstrong** is of infinitely greater value.

My only contact with the Folk World is strictly empirical - the folk clubs, singarounds and the occasional festival, where things seem to be getting along just nicely and people do what they do without troubling too much over why they're doing it. At least this is the impression I get - they might all have deeply held personal philosophical convictions, but when it comes to the moment, they're out there, vibrating in terms of pure experience. I stopped buying Folk Product long ago, or subscribing to any notion of Folkish Celebrity which to me is just a contradiction in terms, believing as I do that this thing we call Folk (as with Holy Mass, Sexual Intercourse and Golf***) is better served by participating in the ephemeral social interactive & experiential context which is as much the thing as the thing itself as continuity becomes enshrined in the purity of the moment. Thus, at the end of it all, we might go home enriched, enlightened, or else simply roll over and go to sleep; and, in any case, tomorrow is always another day...

Truth to tell, I'm past caring what it's called and how it's defined; just as long as it's happening; just as long as there's singers in singarounds and musicians in sessions, because Folk is the singers and the musicians (as oppose to the celebrities) who do this stuff and make it somehow real, or else corporeal in terms of an experience ritual, whereby there is always at least the potential for transcendence, be it realised or not.   

* Sun Ra, quoted in the sleeve note to Friendly Galaxy.

** For one whom the Hot Fives & Hot Sevens represents a near miraculous manifestation of the divine in human folkish form then I'd personally rather it be Louie who said this than anyone else.

*** I am as perplexed by golf as a televised spectator sport as I am by the existence of Folk CDs or Pornography; gigs and dogging might well represent a different level of participation, albeit at a significant remove, but nothing like the remove of watching golf on TV.