Tried to read as many posting as possible before contributing (failed to do all!).

QUARTS into a PINT pot - we have to accept there are (at least) two distinct types of Folk evident in the folk scene generally known as 1- traditional, 2) contemporary.

Recognize this and no problem. Try to put them under one all embracing definition and you can waste a lot of potential songwriting time.

Ewan McColl is a good person to focus on in view of his thoughts on the matter of what is folk, and the fact he contributed some of the best known FOLK (by any popular definition) songs we have in the folk scene now.

Here's an interetsing juxtaposition on a type of song I specialise in - railway songs.

Ewan McColl wrote new 'folk' songs for the pioneer BBC Radio Ballads as an arts and history project.   Dave Goulder wrote songs inspired by his life as a railway worker (on the footplate). I'm not ignoring other railway workers who have written songs about their work by the way (Don Bilston++). Are either set any more or less "proper Folk" songs?

The origins are different but both fit into the living folk tradition. ie perfectly acceptable in any folk club bar the most fundamentalist traditional (and dare I confuse things by adding the songs by a miriad of folk singers who have produced a diverse array of songs for 150 year anniversaries, local lines threatened by closure, lamenting the end of steam power and so on.... without Radio programme commissions or any relation to railways except as a passenger - just because they want to).

Ian Fyvie