Roger from Bal'mer:

I agree that merely writing or recording a song doesn't necessarily deprive a song of "folk" status it would otherwise have, by any definition of "folk" which defines a category of music which actually exists in the workaday lives of members of a modern, literate, industrialized society.

The same attention to context, though, requires me to grant at least half a point to Bruce O. In his posting of April 28 he spoke of the needs of the commercial market bringing new versions of songs into being. I'm not sure I would agree with Bruce O. that the commercialized versions are any less (or more) "folk" than the pre-existing versions. But the influence of the commercial market on the evolution of a given piece of music must be taken into account.

The commercial market has been a factor influencing music since the 17th century and perhaps longer. Valid historical questions are (1) whether the commercial market for printed music caused some music to develop differently from how it would have otherwise, and (2) whether the modern mass electronic market creates influences that are new in kind, or only in degree, from the commercial influences of past ages.

A further point this thread may consider is whether a musicological definition of folk music can be offered independent of a sociological definition. So far on this thread I have only given a sociological definition: Folk music is music people use while doing something besides listening to it. My example was singing or listening to a CD while vacuuming the living room. This is not a musicological definition because the same music is "folk" when I listen to it while vacuuming, and "art" music when I listen to it in a concert hall. A little later I tried to define a musical category of one-line, mostly diatonic melody of consistent tonality, but I didn't (and still don't) require the word "folk" be applied to it. Perhaps any musicological definition of "folk" music won't be able to have precise boundaries; perhaps it must be allowed to overlap a great deal with other categories, such as "popular" music.