Hey, Stringsinger: Not all songwriters, and perhaps not even most write songs that are "conscious efforts based on a personal agenda." Personal experiences, usually, but not agendas. Forced to guess, I'd think that most sonwriters write songs because they enjoy writing songs. At least the songwriters I know. And yes, the folk process is not self-conscious. Why do you assume that all songwriters who sing in the folk idiom are consciously trying to write "folk songs?" That's not been my experience. I write songs. They have a lot of the flavor of folk music because I love folk music and have been deeply immersed in it for most of my adult life. But I never consciously try to write a "folk" song. I also don't know any folksingers who characterize themselves as traditional folksingers. I know of what I speak because I ran a folk concert series for 27 years. The few people I was able to book who I thought of as true traditional folk singers would never call themselves that. They also tended to throw in a popular song now and then, or a recently written song that wasn't a "folk song" at all. They didn't label each song as to it's authenticity before singing it. And who thinks you have to be stupid and uneducated to be a traditional folk singer? No one I know.

You must be hanging around with the wrong folks. :-)

Besides, this thread is NOT about the definition of folk music or traditional music. It's about the process by which new songs are created, and old ones changed. A folk song printed in a collection is one version of a song. There were probably a dozen others equally traditional being sung at the same time.

Finally, I love Leadbelly's music and agree that he was a prime force in folk music. That said, I think it's allright to enjoy a particular song by someone else who wasn't traditional but was having a Damn good time singing.

Jerry