With respect of defining folk there's two approaches. The more practical of the two is the empirical 'Folk Is As Folk Does' definition, which looks at what happens in The Name o' Folk and takes from there. I think of that as my Folk As Flotsam Theory and covers most of the diversity of things you may hear at your average Folk Festival or even see discussed here on Mudcat.

The other is a nebulous academic definition in that it must cover particular idioms of English / American / Australian Traditional Music and Song : i.e. the sort of material we all agree is Folk, just can't quite agree on the finer details. At least I can't! I've had this trouble from the start. Even when I was 13 I remember watching June Tabor in a wide eyed awe at her superlative covers of 'Plains of Waterloo' and 'Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping' but I'd be in utter despair of how in same breath she'd sing sentimental schlock like 'The Band Played Waltzing Matilda' (which no doubt has it's own Roud number by now). The songs belonged to two very different worlds, and I knew which I preferred and why that should be.

Folk wise I'm a total unreconstructed traddy, and, like Jim, have found myself absenting myself from folk clubs over the years until now when I can't face going at all (not the reason I didn't go to see Dick Miles at Fleetwood last week - I was really looking forward to that, but I just wasn't up to it healthwise). Folk songs to me are of the past & tell of that past; they were created within strict idioms by masters of their art - i.e. the not so very ordinary working class women & men who would have been masters of other crafts & trades too. It took Victorian Gentlefolk to define & take an interest in such Folklore - be it song, story, dance, custom, music or whatever. They collected it, stuffed it, ordered it - they didn't stop it from dying, they just preserved it in the museum that Traditional Lore now resides in. I like museums by the way - in my heart of hearts The Revival is like The Pitt Rivers. I applaud the work of Cecil Shiarp as much as I do The Brothers Grim and Asbjorsen & Moe. To paraphrase Ronald Hutton, it is a cornucopia of curiosities to inspire the very soul. At least the souls of those who are inspired by The Traditional.

When it comes to the performance of Traditional Material I'm torn between almost Folksy fiddle 'n' drones, or more Traditional idioms derived from electronic analogue ambience & experimental musics. I don't suppose many here would see that as being in any way 'Traditional', but in the sense of musical continuity and the life & times of my own cultural experience I see the VCS3 Putney and just as much a bespoke 'folk' instrument as a set of Northumbrian bagpipes and the music it produces part of the same wonder of sonic magic that the first musicians felt 50,000 years ago when they began to imitate the sounds of nature on their bull-roarers and antler-bone flutes.

Folk begins / ends here.