‘Folk music is such a vague term’ - that’s an opening remark that’s bound to make you sit up and listen. That’s how several recent interviews started and it’s worth exploring the statement.

I suppose it’s easiest to describe folk music as ‘music that culturally belongs to a people’ - it’s music that speaks of their experiences in their language. It’s by implication, the music of the common people of society and I think that when we use the term ‘the people’ - we mean the common people.”

Not that there is any burning need for yet another folk definition but I like to search for these things and as I happen to agree with this one, I’ll stick with it (for the time being anyway).

The term ‘folk’ is like the proverbial squirrel under the blanket – damn hard to pin down. Depending on your birthplace, generation, country of origin and personal predilection, folk ranges from the work of Tom Paxton, Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson to Martin Carthy, Ralph McTell and Ewan MacColl  - and everyone else in between, before or since, from both sides of the Atlantic (and everywhere else). So that definition is a fairly liberal restriction for a start.

However, to some people folk music is not vague at all. Their opinions are so strong as to discount a whole raft of music that could be called folk. Indeed, many of the singers, bands and composers who consider they write in the folk genre would be horrified to hear their work excluded by these self-made arbiters of taste.

Let’s consider a song that has become a folk anthem – Matty Groves - ask 20,000 people at Cropredy Festival if it’s folk and see what answer you get. However, many consider that Matty Groves as performed by Fairport Convention to be folk-pop or folk-rock. As if that somehow means the song is no longer pure folk and has joined the ranks of superficial or disposable pop. Sitting in a well-known folk club recently I found those who argued the song is more correctly sung without the electric instruments. The view of some in the place was that ‘as performed by Fairport’ the song is no longer ‘folk’. Interesting. But who’s to say which is the correct style? Which is folk music? And who cares?

When you ask: Which is the correct style?” The answer is: “There is no correct style” One of the problems in defining folk music is the same as defining almost any style of music. Definitions of any sort are usually hard, fast and fixed. Music, folk or otherwise is not. So everything about folk depends on who you ask.