I have very little sympathy for this issue, so forgive me if I am a little blunt in my response to the complaints about Singer/Songwriters and the Folk/Not-folk distinction.

Some of the complaints I've heard are of the following type.

"Wbenever I go to the local self-proclaimed 'Folk Club' they have some kind of singer/songwriter who, while they may be good on their own merits, aren't folk music and not what I wanted/paid to see."

OK. So you go once and you come away disappointed. You go again, and get disappointed again. Figure it out already! Ask for a refund! Stop going! Sue them for false advertising (if you can get a lawyer to hear your complaint without giggling). Better yet, stop going and organize a group of people to put on the kind of stuff you want to see. (Insert patriotic theme music with high-minded speech on Freedom, free-enterprise, self-reliance and all that stuff here). Just please, please, PLEASE don't come looking for sympathy. First of all, in the grande scheme, and even in a petit scheme of things, the offense of being disappointed at a concert over an issue of semantics does not inspire much grief, nor should it. Second, even if you are absoultely correct that the use of the word 'folk' to describe singer/songwriters is based on incorrect past application to the likes of Simon and Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs et al., that application is now so widespread that, in spite of anyone's objection, it has to be considered part of the lexicon. Given that, if you're fooled more than once or twice into seeing a singer/songwriter because you saw the word folk on the label...I'm sorry, but the problem isn't with the sender of the message, its with the reciever's inability to learn.

The second complaint I hear most often is the purity and preservation complaint. It goes like this. "If we let singer/songwriters call themselves folk then the 'true' folk musical traditions will be lost or worse yet transformed into something unrecognizable'. Well I don't see it. First of all preservation comes in two complementary, coexisting forms. The first is what I call museum or archive preservation. It is where, to as great an extent as possible, the original forms are preserved as is, either through recordings, or by learning to play and perform the songs as they were. To hear some tell it, this type of preservation is somehow threatened. Yet I would argue that there is at least 10 times the amount of recorded 'original form' folk and traditional music available to the public than ever, from compilations of old 78 recordings spanning disparate sorces from Robert Johnson to the Carter Family to shape note choruses. Then there is the collection that spawned this forum. The Digital Tradition is right now preserving thousands of tradtional songs, cross referenced and easily accessible to anyone. The archival form of preservation is alive and well, and I very much doubt that it suffers in any way if Big Road Blues has to share space in the DT with Big Yellow Taxi.

But there is also preservation that occurs by incorporating old forms into new ones. This kind of preservation is less concerned with purity than with taking something of the essence of an old form and evolving it into something new, like Bluegrass for example. When they created bluegrass, Bill Monroe and his contemporaries didn't destroy the blues or mountain traditions, they advanced them.

The last argument I have heard, and which really frost's me the most, is the 'I'm entitled to complain, having been forced to suffer through so much bad music'. I'll forgoe all but this cursory nod to the 'one mans trash is another mans treasure' point, and go directly to the nub of the matter. The quantity of good and even great music is in direct proportion to the number of people playing music altogether. The greater the number of people that create and play music, the greater the amount of great music that gets created, and the greater the amoung of bad music. Its the same as what you see in sports. A country that produces great baseball players does so because of the large number in that country that play the game, no matter how good or how bad they are. Increase the participation an you increase the number and quality of those that become great. Reduce the participation and you reduce the level of greatness. Its a direct cause and effect relationship. So it is with music. The more you get participating, at any level, the more you foster the kind of music you want to hear. That means that complaints about the 'amount of bad music' are analagous to the old 'Litte Red Hen' fable. Nobody wants any part of the boring, unpleasant side of creating a loaf of bread, they just want to be called to get their slice when its hot out of the oven.

And one last thing. Don't waste my time with any arguements about 'I paid money, I have a right to complain'. First you have that right whether you pay or not. Second its not a right, its just something nobody can prevent you from doing. Third, I'm familiar with the kind of places that these 'low talent' songwriters and performers play at, and I know that aside from the money spent on beer, they don't cost that much.

Yea its a diatribe I know but its the way I feel.