The problem is one inherent in the nature of revivalist pedantry in which a couple of innocent enough general adjectives (i.e. folk and traditional) have somehow become Holy Nouns for a musical construct which on the one hand is as wonderfully diverse as all the thread titles on Mudcat would suggest, yet as anally narrow as the more religiously hysterical reactions on this thread would indicate.

Well! Where are you going to put me in your definition of those who disagree with you? I'm not a revivalist. I'm not a pedant; in fact the real pedants have been accusing me of "ruining" the tradition for years. I believe that adjectives, when used in a specific setting, have specific meanings. There is nothing even slightly religious about how I play music, or even how I talk about it.

I keep saying this, and you keep responding as if you don't get it: It's not about what music gets played, how it gets played, where it gets played, who plays it, or whether it's any good.

It is about a documented phenomenon that, when described, is a useful way of talking about how some music came to have some of the attributes it has. It's because we are fascinated by finding different versions of tunes and songs that crop over wide geographic areas and centuries of time. Many of us find it easier to have conversations about this phenomenon if we have words to attach to the concepts that we all more or less agree on the meaning of.

SO'P, I've just realized that the reason I feel the need to respond to you is not so much because of your flights of fancy about the origin and nature of traditional music, but because you almost always accompany them with the absolute the conviction that anyone who disagrees with you is some hidebound traditionalist who is going to go bonkers if anyone plays anything that isn't pure, or if they play it in the wrong way. Since everyone has said many times that none of this exclusively determines what music we listen to, what music we play, or especially what music anyone else should listen to or play, being confronted with the excessively polarized language you use in most of your posts is very annoying.

A while back you gave a very nice paragraph about your musical tastes, influences, etc. What you seem to be missing is that most of us have extremely wide musical tastes. Traditional folk music is my favorite, but I don't usually play it in anything like a traditional manner, although sometimes I do. I have played in heavy rock bands, jazz fusion bands, blues bands, medieval and Renaissance bands, Irish, French, Breton, and Swedish dance bands, a folk-rock band that blends eastern and western Europen music, progressive rock bands, and I spend a lot of time playing purely improvised new age and light jazz piano. I suspect you and I would actually be able to play well together. I'm sure you have some music somewhere on line, but I haven't heard it yet. Can you give me a link? I have some slide shows on YouTube with a small sampling of my recordings if anyone is interested.

All these discussions don't have anything to do with what actually happens on the ground when music is being played or listened to. All we want is to have a set of words to use in having discussions. Traditional folk music is taken. Please choose something else.

I would love to have a conversation on Mudcat about some of the interesting things that turn up in the folk process, without any discussion of what it means or whether it exists or where the lines are.