"If a definition of folk has been researched for over a century, it wasn't well documented or promoted. "
Remind me - how long you've been on the scene?
Of course it was well documented and promoted
Sharp published his 'English Folk songs, Some Conclusions' in 1907 - the Folk Song Journal had come into existence 8 years earlier.
He published his Somerset and Appalachian collection and got folk songs put into schools - we were intoning Early One Morning and Oh No John in the 1950s.
His colleagues, Lucy Broadwood, Frank Kidson and others were publishing collections - folk songs all - no equivocation.
There was a landslide of works both collections and scholarly works on folk song throughout the first half of the 20th century in England and Scotland and particularly in America
By the fifties there was no doubt whatever what folk song meant - them the BBC mounted a huge collecting project in thee early 1950s and broadcast it in a series of progremmes 'As I Roved Out'
Similar things wee happening in Ireland with Ciarán Mac Mathúna's broadcasts.
There was ever a doubt what folk or traditional meant.
The deliberately generated fog spread about by interested parties is a relatively new thing - it helped **** up the folk scene, and now, it appears there are some among us who would have it do the same for research.
"Millions of people on the planet have in their heads what they consider to be folk. " I very much doubt it, but if there are, you are not among them as you haven't been able to produce a description of what you mean by folk so far other than "whatever I choose to call folk" - that seems to sum sum up the present 'definition'.
" I really don't see why we can't do the same with 'Folk Song'."
Fair enough Brian - but again, that doesn't seem to be what is happening here.
The amount of aggression, insulting behaviour and contempt for the old singers and their songs indicates a hostile takeover by people who neither know about nor care for folk/traditional song.
That takeover has affected the club scene adversely and it certainly doesn't bode well for the future of song.
I can only point again to what's happened in Ireland, where, simply by identifying what me mean and centering our attention on it, it's future has been guaranteed for at least another two generations.
Can't see why we should abandon that chance for a small group of people who can't even scratch together an alternative explanation that enough support to make it a definition.
Jim Carroll