Ron (shouting removed) - The reason we clump certain types of singer-songwriter and certain contemporary acoustic music into the term "folk music" is simply because it is folk music.

Yes, but what's your reason for saying that it's folk music? To put it another way, what's your answer when someone says it isn't?

There are so many styles, how would you expect to know what you are getting?

That's a very good argument for restricting the folk label. Yes, there's a huge variety of traditional music out there; all the more reason to give traditional music room to breathe.

Nick:

Your argument is always that there is a huge pent up demand waiting for folk in its proper pure form to be presented. I don't believe that is true.

I think there's substantial demand for contemporary acoustic music and for traditional music. Some people started a weekly FC here in Chorlton six years ago; these days it's almost entirely singer-songwriter (the Myspace page doesn't even mention traditional music), and most nights it's packed out. A year and a bit ago, a monthly singaround started up (on a "mostly but not entirely traditional" basis); it's just gone fortnightly, and it's packing them in too.

When I started going to the singaround I'd been going to the FC for five years on a pretty regular basis (sometimes weekly). In all that time I'd never heard Ranzo or Jones's Ale or Thousands or more. When I heard that stuff I liked it, but I didn't get to hear much of it at the local folk club. That just seems a bit odd to me.