Funnily enough, if we MUST use definitions, then any piece of music is a folk song. Period.

All this 1954 nonsense fits if it happens to agree with your own definition, but as there is no one person who can say "I coined the phrase, therefore I decide what is and what isn't" then the only thing that makes it a folk song is if you think it is one.

I still say that here in The UK, folk music has many definitions. Funny that to hear an old recording of Benjamin Britten at the piano makes me want to polish my guns but hear the same song sung by a few mates with guitars and beer at the ready and I enjoy it as much as the next guy.

I say it again, (at the risk of Jim Carroll saying I am wrong, which I find a rather strange word to use when we are all giving opinions of something with no real answer??)

For me, folk music is amongst other things, any piece of music that tends to be played acoustically in an informal setting, usually within spitting distance of beer.

After all, everything is what you experience it to be?