"Trouble is, Jim, when other people say what they believe folk music is, "
Trouble is Dave that when I ask prople to tell me what they think fok music is, they can't tell me - they tell me it now means different things to different people
If folk music, particularly folk song, hadn't been as well documented as it has been, and accepeted for as long as it has for what it is, that would make sense
As it is, that argument is utter nonsense - we know what folk song is by pulling one of the eight large volumes of ;The Greig Duncan Folk Song Collection' or a copy of 'The Penguin Book of English, or Scottish, or American, or Canadian, or American or Australian Folk songs
There are many hundreds of collections of real folk songs and there are as many studies of the genre - -it is as well studied as any other cultural genre
The only way your argument can apply is to ignore the facts of what folk song is
What it boils down to seems to be that the only definition now being applied is "that's what I like to listen to and sing so I am going to call it folk and tell people what we do at our club is folk

That just doesn't make sense and, to my mind, it's sharp practice
There isn't one person I can ever remember that has responded to the fact that your non-definition - blame it on the people, definition is severely damaging the future of a music regarded by most as 'The Music, or The Voice of the People' - the cultural voice of 'ordinary' people who have created and sung songs that reflected their lives and experiences since time immemorial - a people who have long been regarded as mainly 'cultureless and non-
creative'

We knew what that the music/song we came to listen to back in the early sixties was unique - and it turned us on
We are now being told, by people who I otherwise like and respect, that that music has had its day
They/you are not offering a viable alternative - on the contrary - they/you can't agree among yourselves - cant, or refuse to give 'your knind of folk' an identity
In doing to, you have made the term 'folk' utterly meaningless - a convenient way of avoiding the bother of having to think up a title for the stuff you like
I find that totally unfathomable and totally unforgivable - a vandsalising attack on the people's culture

I hate to say it, but you are beginning to sound like an arch-Brexiteer - "that's what the people are voting for" - really ?
Jim