What a wonderful thread this is! All kinds of great ideas and feelings about this funny thing "folk music". This right here is WHAT I CAME TO THE MUDCAT CAFE FOR. I have always sung all those songs that were popularized by the Weavers, K. Trio, Bob Gibson, etc.- without shame, and without categorizing and putting them in little boxes or arguing about their "authenticity". And you know what??.... people in bars and in parks and up at campgrounds and all over the place love to hear them, they sing along, and the songs have a life of their own, which will always be so. It's because they're ABOUT SOMETHING, as opposed to the garbage that we're fed by the mass media. Keep on singin' 'em out!!...let's have another of them there "folk revivals"....the first one wasn't half bad!