> commercialization, promotion and the agenda of impressing all and sundry with virtuosity for it's own sake.

What so many professional "folk musicians" are into.

> questions of equal unimportance

In other words, most questions. This just happens to be one that interests some of us.

> Lighter - we're in violent agreement.

Finally there's somebody....

OK then. You've got your "traditional music," which everybody seems to be able to agree on, whether they want to listen to it or not. It's also known as "folk."

Then you've got your "folk-rock," which can be either rock arrangements of traditional music (like Steeleye)or else new rock songs claimed to have some relationship, however tenuous, to traditional music (I'm thinking early Dylan). That too is sometimes just called "folk."

Finally you've got "folk" of the Chaney-McKennitt variety, which is essentially "new or recent singer-songwriter material that is usually acoustic, draws on various styles including jazz, strives for nuanced, often romantic lyrics on a wide variety of subjects, is believed to be especially personal and sincere, and is often sung in a dreamy or understated way."

And I think number three is what most people are thinking of when they talk about and pay money for "folk."

What makes it complicated is that "folk" has not one, not two, but at least three distinct meanings when applied to music.

And you never know which one is going to pop up....