"I find myself, even when discussing with other enthusiasts, more and more inclined to use qualifiers to describe what type of folk song I'm talking about."
I have to say, I find all this more than a little bizarre.
I've sort of come around to the idea that I have to check first before I head out to a venue which called itself 'folk' to make sure I would find the music I was looking for after driving miles in the pissing rain on a cold winter's night.
Now it appears I'm going to have to apply this to the research side of my interests.
I don't get to the Folk Song Forum meetings due to the distance, but on a number of occasions we've considered doing the trip with one of them in mind and incorporating it with a few days break in the U.K. - never quite managed up to now.
It seems we might have had a lucky escape and we could have found ourselves sitting through hours of discussions on Bluegrass, Jazz, 1950s pop songs, Hip-Hop, Rap, Country and Western.... and a whole host of other genres that don't interest me in the slightest, or if at all, certainly not enough to persuade me to travel a few hundred miles to participate in.
Same with the Roud Folk song Index.
Whenever anybody has asked about British folk song I have guided them to Steve's index and told them that they would find a fairly comprehensive referenced list of songs and where they are to be found.
Now, it seems, it would be dishonest of me to do this - that his list is far from comprehensive, or is misnamed and only deals with a certain, unspecified type of folk song.
To be complete, he would have had to include - what - The Hank Williams song book, The Best of the Fifties, Max Miller's Little Ditties, Songs From the Victorian Parlours, Elvis's Greatest Hits......?
I couldn't begin to define to newcomers what I mean by 'folk' because a definition no longer exists - the old one is invalid and until you and your mates have arrived at a new one, nothing has been put up to replace it.
C'mon lads, what on earth are we talking about here?
We have a bunch of songs coming from a definable and fairly well-established source and going through a fairly logical process.
We have chosen, up to now, to agree to define them as folk songs and have spent a great deal of our lives (some of us) in trying to understand them, and pass on what we found to others so they can finish the job.
All a waste of time, apparently - we've been pissing in the wind.
Personally, I find all this as disturbing as I find the efforts of some people to remove the credit for the making of our folk songs from the people I have always believed made them - the rural working people, the soldiers, sailors, miners and mill workers... of the past, and place that honour (or 90% plus of it), at the door of notoriously bad poets (hacks), the vast majority of whose outpourings are unsingable.
Sorry - until someone comes up with a half-thought-out, workable alternative that we can all agree upon and is based on genuine research which incorporates that done in the past, I think I'm happy to stick with the old definition, as much in need of repair as it might be.
"songwriter is very isolated and adrift in a very competitive field."
My heart bleeds Al!
Fervently hope that younger singers are flocking to the scene just as much as I hope that 'the folk' are still making and re-processing songs (and there are still as many clubs around as there were a dozen or so years ago)
Little sign of any of it.
Jim Carroll