Jin Cowdrey on "Defining Folk Music"

Thanks for that Tim. It puts the 1954 definition in context as a compromise between the diverse views of a bunch of squabbling scholars. The actual practicioners don't seem to get a look in.

There are some alarming lines -
only that which has the germs of great art must be let loose on the simple-minded public whom we invite to sample our wares.
which puts Ralph Vaughan Williams in a rather different light from how I'd imagined him.

Even more alarming -
Donal O?Sullivan, for example, stated that when scholars encounter newer folk songs that they feel run contrary to the tradition they should not encourage them.
Musn't have the lower orders getting ideas above their station.

Some were less doctrinaire -
His [Albert Marinus] final definition of folkloric song was intentionally vague; a definitive definition, he argued, ?prematurely freezes knowledge.?

This is a bit more encouraging -
Others, like Felix Hoeburger, raised the idea that new developments are signs of a healthy tradition, and that those who place a high value on quaintness are cooperating more with tourism than with scholarship.