Insane Beard
"the 1954 definition is just so much academic wank"
No - the real tossers of this world are those who dictate to the rest of us what our interests should be.
You need to remember that not everybody takes their brain out and leaves it in a glass at the side of the bed (and forgets to put it back the following morning) - whoops sorry, dropping to your level now!
Glueman;
Can't find much to argue with in your posting, apart from your analysis of what 'the traditionalists' (whoever they are) expect from a 'folk club'.
I don't know, and can't remember ever knowing anybody who would not enjoy a night of folk songs and ballads mixed in with compositions of say MacColl, Seeger, Rossleson, Tawney, Graham Miles, Ed Pickford, Eric Bogle, Paul Smith, Adam McNaughton, Enoch Kent, Jim McLean, Con 'Fada' O'Driscoll, Fintan Vallely... and all the others who have drawn from the tradition for their inspiration.
While I believe one is folk and the other isn't, I also believe the clubs would, as you rightly say, become museums without the input of all these people.
This is a bit of a long haul from the songs that drove me out of the clubs; the bland, navel gazing, introspective pieces that owe more to middle-of-the-road pop than any folk song I've ever heard; the unsatisfactory music hall stuff (not unlike American/Chinese food - one belch and you're hungry again), the early 20 century pop-pap, et al, and I'm hardy likely to respond well to an evening of Beatles songs. I left home in the sixties because I found that if you didn't like football or the Beatles, Liverpool had sod-all else to offer - not even work!
As far as research is concerned, the term 'folk' is specific - it refers to a specific music, literature.... whatever. Yes, the process that once created the songs is as dead as Baroque, main stream classical, Victorian parlour and tavern singing... but this doesn't mean that the creative folk forms can't be used to make new songs - who knows, we might be able to win back the tradition - but we won't do so by pretending it hasn't gone away.
In the end it all boils down to the fact that I want to know what's inside the tin before I open it, otherwise I'll go to another shop.
Jim Carroll