"A labour Club in Glossop....? Abit like the music hall joke about the Conservative Club in Moscow."

Lay off the class war there, Al, I'll have you know that Glossop is an oasis of socialism, holding out against the Tories in Buxton and rural parts of High Peak. Our Labour club is a staunch supporter of acoustic music and cheap beer - though admittedly a significant number of Labour Party members have traditionally frequented the Conservative club, where they have snooker tables.

Returning to the more general discussion, you could - of course - try to define folk music by form. The popular songs of the 17th - 19th century that wound up in the mouths of the singers that the likes of Sharp collected from have a different musical and lyrical language from the music hall era songs that came later, or the blues and jazz influenced popular musics of the later 20th century. Glueman is right to identify that the sound of those earlier songs, coupled with particular conventions regarding instrumentation and singing style, as the distinctive sound of the folk revival - the traditional end of it at least. But like Steve I've long accepted that 'folk' means differen things in different contexts... and this thread isn't supposed to be a 'What is Folk?' thread anyway.