"Designated Folk Contexts: Folk Club, Folk Festival, Singaround etc. Where Folkies gather."
You mean like the 7th Conference of the International Folk Music Council?
Is it really as arbitrary as that? If a folk club books a string quartet, does what they do automatically become 'folk' or do they have to fight for the title?
Howard just said it all regarding chap books, which were reportings of songs "which had already been absorbed into the unwritten living tradition of a community". The argument as to the effect of writing down songs dates back at least to Walter' Scott's time when he was repremanded by James Hogg's mother for destroying them "bt writing them down".
"Just as when there are no birds left ornithologists will be glad of the books!"
Not sure what this means - I do know that the folk scene lost at least three quarters of its participants when a clear definition of 'folk' was abandoned and audiences no longer knew what they would be listening to when they turned up at a folk club.
I get tired of repeating it, but here in Ireland the music, more-or-less in it's pure form, is thriving, youngsters are flocking to it in their thousands, music teachers are turning away wannabe players because they can't cope, archives and folk music resource centres are springing up like mushrooms and asking for grants for the music (up to the present economic crisis) is an exercise in pushing on open doors - (there/that/teeshirt) - the reason; no ambiguity on what the music is or where it stands culturally, historically and socially.
Jim Carroll
PS - If we can't define 'folk' clearly how can we define what is 'a folk way of singing'.