response 6 of 26:

Aug 6 17:39 UTC 2001

The problem is that "folk music" has acquired a lot of definitions
over the last century or so.   Start with the academic definition
of the folklorists, who were interested in material which had been
passed down in a community through oral tradition, in the era
before mass literacy and mass media.  When you see songs credited
as "traditional," they probably fit that definition.

From there, you could strike off with a definition looking at
the function the music performs in the community, as happyboy does
with his assertions in resp:3 - resp:5 that rap music serves as
a folk music for its community.

Moving off in another direction, we get to the folk revival era of
the 1950s and 1960s, starting with the Almanac Singers and the
Weavers, in which traditional songs were turned into commercial
objects which could be recorded and sold.  From that period we
get a stylistic definition of singing with acoustic guitars
(Tim Ryan's resp:1) and an association with leftist politics.
The association with leftist politics in turn brings us
the 1960s protest songs (early Dylan probably being the best known
example), which still fit close to the functional description that 
happyboy espouses, still done in the singer-with-guitar style.

Then we get to the stuff I grouse about,  where popular music 
singers adopted the folk/protest style for introspective songs 
about love and their lives, stuff which functionally was really
indistinguishable from other mass market pop music, but which 
stylistically looked like folk music.  Martin Carthy described 
sensitive acoustic singer-songwriters as part of a tradition 
stretching all the way back to Joni Mitchell.  
This new description of "folk" music is mostly dominant 
on the American side of the Atlantic.  Britain's "Folk Roots" magazine, 
after fighting against it for years, threw in the towel three years 
ago and the cover now reads "Froots".

So it's really no longer possible to come up with one definition.
There have been too many definitions through history, and 
there is lots of room for each writer (or marketeer) to pick 
the definition suiting their intent.

I tend to figure that it's folk music if the folk music audience 
has adopted it.  It's a circular definition, alas, but it saves time.

response 8 of 26:

Aug 7 15:45 UTC 2001

It helps confuse matters that there's more than one `folk music audience.'
I've taken to saying I listen to "folk dance tunes," because that's more or
less true: the music I like is the music of the folk dance community.  But
there are other folk communities -- Dylan fans, coffee-shop folkies,
the `world music' crowd -- who I don't have much in common with at all.

So even for a circular definition it's pretty rickety, but it works.

response 10 of 26:

Aug 7 18:55 UTC 2001

"Folk music" is best defined as a fuzzy set with a multivariate 
definition.  Come up with a set of characteristics that are typical of 
the ideal pure "folk music as I point to it."  For instance, it's 
acoustic, it's of traditional authorship, it's marketed as folk music, 
it's played by people who play what's generally agreed to be folk 
music, etc.  Anything with a certain number of these characteristics is 
folk music; anything with markedly fewer isn't.  For instance, not all 
acoustic music (even all acoustic guitar-&-vocal music) is folk, not if 
it lacks every other characteristic of folk music.

response 12 of 26:

Aug 9 16:30 UTC 2001

Hersh did one album all of traditional songs ("Murder, Misery and then 
Goodnight," which I keep meaning to try to pick up -- it is, or was, 
mail order only) but for the most part I have her compartmentalized 
as "acoustic pop."   This is based just on what I read about her, 
though, I have not heard any of her work since Throwing Muses broke up.

response 14 of 26:

Aug 13 02:10 UTC 2001

Hmmm well check out some of the material from Hips & Makers before you
pigeonhole her as acoustic pop.  I think she is far closer to say an Emmy
Lou Harris than a Fiona (blech) Apple.

response 16 of 26:

Aug 13 06:18 UTC 2001

Hmmm I guess you mean pop in the old 60s sense of populat music i.e.
the Beatles and Bob Dylan were classifed as pop.  I guess when I think
of pop in it's modern usage my first thought is N'Synch and Mariah
Carey. Perhaps a new category is needed for acoustic non folk music?

response 18 of 26:

Aug 19 01:11 UTC 2001

For those of you who would like to see a good movie about folk music, see "The
Songcatcher" currently at the Michigan Theater.

response 20 of 26:

Sep 8 13:40 UTC 2001

        I just saw on allmusic.com, Roger Miller is 
        described as, among other things, "anti-folk".

        That just cracked me up, that he would be
        open about not paying reverent homage to the sacred
        genre.

        If we have a hard time defining it and see that there
        are really an number of non-musical associations,
        why do "we" feel eager to use the word anyway? Would it be
        a crime to suggest that there is much better terminology
        available for discussing music?

        Anti-folk. Hmm. If I feel kind of militant about
        it, can I get an acoustic guitar and sing in
        a protest style? If I strum very sloppily?

response 22 of 26:

Sep 8 23:26 UTC 2001

I've known about folk nazis since I read about the protests about Steeleye
Span ruining traditional British folk.

response 24 of 26:

Nov 19 09:12 UTC 2001

  I thought "Traditional" meant written by "Anonymous"..  :-p

response 26 of 26:

Nov 20 19:11 UTC 2001

Traditional tunes tend to be written by Anonymous.  But "traditional
music" is sometimes written by one of Anonymous's better-named imitators.