'I don't know how many countries there are on the world and how many of them have multiple communities, but Bountyhound hasn't heard more than 0.00000000001% of the songs that even just make up traditional song, let alone folk song in the genre.

Well if you take the world as a whole, then that may well be a true statement, but I was assuming we are talking UK here, and I'm sure you are really bright enough to have worked that one out!

Now you've just told Jim to defend his own posts, and this response to my challenging your assertion that traditional is a small subset is a rather weak response to that challenge. Whilst I agree that traditional is a subset of the wider genre, and I'm very comfortable calling something written yesterday 'folk', to repeat what I said earlier, from my experience I'm not convinced that it is a 'small subset' and more importantly, whether you like the tradition or not, it is the roots of it all. Without the tradition, there would be no new 'folk' music.