"Ewen Macoll did a sterling job of conning the world into thinking some of his songs were traditional"
Don't supppose it makes the slightest difference to those who have made up their mind about 'EWAN' MacColl - but a few facts on the subject
Although he was proud of the fact that his songs were taken up by the communities he was writing about, unlike many 'snigger-snogwriters' who appear regularly on this forum to tell us that their particular introspective musings are 'folk', (but would be first to throw all their toys out of the pram if they woke up one morning to find that they had been taken at their word and all their songs had been placed in the public domain, where all true folk songs belong) MacColl never claimed that they had become 'traditional'. He was openly of the opinion that the tradition was moribund and had all but died out, so even though some had been taken up (particularly by Travellers and fishermen), there was no living tradition to absorb and re-make them into folk songs. Perhaps someone can point to him saying otherwise - (won't hold my breath)
There is no doubt that some of his songs were taken up, so much so that he was accused by various people of 'stealing' Shoals of Herring from a traditional singer and claiming it as his own. Professor Horace Beck claimed it to be "typical of the songs to be found among Kerry fishermen" and re-named it 'Shores of Erin'.
We recorded around six versions of 'Freeborn Man', mainly garbled fragments (which pretty well bears out MacColl's claim of a moribund tradition) from Irish and Scots Travellers, and once again he was accused of "stealing", this time from Travellers, on this occasion by a Scots academic. As well as this unsubstantiated accusation, Jeremy Sandford (sociological writer - 'Gypsies', 'Cathy Come Home' etc) in his 'Songs From The Roadside' stated that three of the songs written for 'The Travelling People' Radio Ballad were adapted from existing Travellers songs, though, like previous claims of other songs, he never produced evidence to back this up and, to my knowledge, none has ever been forthcoming.
None of MacColl's songs sounded anything like 'traditional' - hardly surprising, they weren't intended to. Who knows, perhaps he just did his homework on the subjects he was writing about and went and wrote good songs!!!
Anyway, the bottom line is that people can't have it both ways; if, as is often claimed, we still have a living folk tradition, then it is legitimate to identify some of MacColl's songs as 'traditional', even though he never made such a claim. If we don't, it isn't - simple as that.
"Who defines folk?"
The term has been defined and fully accepted by those working on the subject since 1846, when it was first used (and immediately generally accepted) by William John Thoms. The 1954 definition was merely a fine tuning to specifically apply it to song and music (this also was immediately widely accepted by those working in the field).
To date, it has never been re-defined to the satisfaction of those involved. The necessary consensus for re-definition does not exist, so the existing one stands and continues to be documented.
So who gets to define it? Nobody - it's been done
Jim Carroll