Does anyone not recall when the record racks at the local chain store placed all recordings, regardless of genre, by any Black artists under the heading of "SOUL"? It was clearly an oversimplified way of categorizing music by the use of a racial characteristic, rather than by a careful examination of content.

The stores today often don't even bother with having a section for "FOLK". Many times a tremendous variety of music, including bluegrass, cowboy, traditional and others,) is jumbled into "COUNTRY". It is simpler that way. These people don't care about the finer points of the differences. Hell, they don't really seem to care about any points at all. The broad category is convenient for their purposes, plain and simple.

It seems to be the case as well when they actually do have a section for "FOLK". All sorts of things are lumped together that would most certainly cause a gasp from the folk purists. It is common to find Smithsonian collections in the same rack with Laura Nyro, The Weavers, and Lorenna Mckennitt.

These rack labels are there for the purpose of locating music that is something other than ROCK, JAZZ, CLASSICAL or COMEDY. If the artists' musical styles were more readily identified with any of those categories, that is where you would find them.

It would make no sense to have a "SINGER/SONGWRITER" label because this is also a broad definition which encompasses people who write and sing stuff that is NEW AGE, ROCK, COUNTRY, or that vaguely fits into any number of other categories.

And so, we are left with having S/S artists who are sometimes lumped into FOLK, among other things. The people who decide this often know absolutely NOTHING about the finer points of musical styles. They just want to put these artists somewhere!

The same holds true with the organizers and promoters of the S/S's. They have to advertise them as belonging some readily identifiable category. For them, the broader the label, the larger audience they hope to capture.

Labels are always with their limitations. It wasn't very many years ago when I, with great anticpation, tuned into a brand new radio station that claimed it was only going to play "ALTERNATIVE" music. I could hardly wait for their first broadcast! It didn't take long, of course, for me to discover that they defined, "alternative" rather differently than the way I did. Bummer, man!