It's like this - Radio, TV, Record companies, Shops, Clubs, Festivals, practically anything one can think of that decides common definitions - have come down on the side of folk being This Thing.

Have they? I was under the impression that what you get when you go to one folk club is quite different from what you get when you go to another, and that they're both different from what you get when you go to a festival, and that all of the above are different from what you get if you go to a shop and look in the CD rack labelled Folk. And the contents of that CD rack have definitely changed over time - as in, over the last five years.

Jacques Brel, Amsterdam. Donovan, Isle of Islay. Johnnie Mathis, When a Child is Born (complete with spoken-word section). Pleasant and Delightful, sung in two-part harmony, sight-read from sheet music. Can you tell me one thing all those performances have got in common?

Something called 'folk' - something with no identifying characteristics, as far as we can see - is a bit in vogue at the moment, and it's getting a lot of younger people through the doors of FCs. That's good. But tides of fashion (and marketing) go out as well as in; the editor of the NME is going to wake up one morning and decide that singer-songwriters who sound a bit like Vashti Bunyan are just so last year. When 'folk' goes out of fashion, some FCs are going to be hit hard. I think we should be trying to build something solid, by getting a few more people exposed to traditional music.