Even the professional folklorists on another list are having a hard fime defining 'folk music', 'folk song' and the like (Dick and Susan of DT are probably still on it as well as others that comment here). (I'm been off that for a while, their server doesn't like my messages. No problems with a 'majordomo' type). I'm of the old school. Song has to survive 50 or more years by oral tradition alone-alone-alone. Rare is the song that was noted by a traditional singer using musical accompaniement. That's not all, but I won't go into minor details here. Folk Lyric records had an 'Interpreter' series for traditional songs sung by professioanal singers, and I'd like to see that expanded to include such as Ewan MacColl, who sometimes sang songs that he learned from traditional singers, sometimes he expanded traditional texts from printed sources, and sometimes got his old songs and tunes entirely from printed sources. Same for A. L. Lloyd.