I agree. There are a few free reed instruments called harmonium, some portitive organs. But all make a pleasing sound. The shruti box as played by Jackie Oates among others can be worked by her foot while playing the fiddle. It has bellows on a hinge and some don’t have keys to play, but are set to a drone to harmonise. Either way, I do like the harmonium.
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There is now a forest school at Miserden, where I’m sure the traditional songs are sung around the camp fire … or not if they non PC or the fire is safety hazard. The piano is still there but I wonder how many members of staff play it. I must ask what a typical music lesson involves these days.
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If you like a modern spin on the tradition this is well worth a listen. The Imagined Village - from a few years back (jeez 15!). Hopefully you can see the range of artists on the rear photo.
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Tonight we hosted the excellent Flook, who started their twenty something date tour here in sunny Emsworth. One of the best things about putting on these shows is looking after the bands, so it was a group curry beforehand and a team photo afterwards. They are all over the place in the next few weeks and are well worth seeing. Just great musicians and thoroughly lovely people.
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I’m with you re Eva Cassidy. Yes - she crossed many genres - but if Joni Mitchell or Joan Baez playing acoustic and singing is folk, then to my mind so is Eva 
To me folk is acoustic guitar, great lyrics that you can hear clearly. Is that also singer-songwriter - sure it is. But let’s not get hung up on labels and just enjoy the great music that Eva put out. I love the story that it was our old ‘friend’ the Wogan that helped popularize her music.
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I’ll disagree here. Adding people to the genre who generally aren’t folk musicians to me tends to dilute the genre which in England at least is largely ignored by the general public (and often laughed at, finger in the ear etc), Scotland and Ireland on the other hand are quite proud of their traditional music 
Sure some musicians cross boundaries or adapt trad songs to suit. Led Zeppelin covered folk songs and even had Sandy Denny guest on “The Battle of Evermore” but Led Zep aren’t a folk band. Metallica also have played a folk song to many people’s surprise.
I can’t hear the lyrics clearly on most of Julie Fowlis’ songs…
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It’s also worth adding that a huge amount of folk music has no singing at all. It’s a very broad church. Take Flook, who I posted about above - flute, accordion, whistles, acoustic guitar and bodhrán.
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It looks a bit like everyone means something a bit different by Folk. @Mjrwhitehead may have helped us here: perhaps traditionally-based acoustic music by white English people is ‘Folk’, but it is ‘Traditional’ (not Folk) if it has roots in another musical/ ethnic tradition, and it is neither if it blends traditions.
Meanwhile I can only agree with the other comment - it is interesting what is and isn’t ‘Folk’ to each person, but good music turns up in literally every genre and sub-category, and being good matters much more than being ‘Folk’ to all.
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Yes - I like your suggestion of the distinction between Folk and traditional. When I hear the term Folk I think about the artists called Folk artists in the 60’s, and their natural descendants over the years. I suppose that might even be termed pop/folk. I don’t mean to say traditional folk, heritage folk, ethnic folk type music - although it has at least as much right to be called Folk as anything else. It’s almost as confusing as the traditional knock on UK vs USA - two nations divided by a common language
I wonder if it’s helpful to look at a parallel in the art world. Could naive art be considered folk art? Well perhaps not as such art is generally considered to be produced by the untrained …
I would be reluctant to label ‘folk’ as a ‘white’ phenomenon, but would be happy for it to be European … but this dangerous ground. Folk music may well be a subset of traditional, but IMV not all traditional music is folk.
I don’t think you could even restrict folk to European.
Isn’t folk music simply music based on traditional music. Traditional music is worldwide, obviously.
L’Arpeggiata - The South America Project, is worth a listen. Based largely on South American traditional/folk music. 
This is so difficult, spend all night in the pub debating and I’m sure there would be no answer.
There is so much cross fertilisation, when did folk start. Pre printing press when there was an oral tradition of passing new and events. Was it music outside of the royal courts and gentry. Articles about broadside ballads note mixing of oral and written at a time when education was not universal.
Did Beethoven write protest songs? I ask that wondering whether protest singers, Guthrie, Baez, Dylan were folk singers of their era, then an internet search and a reference to Schiller’s Ode To Freedom…
Were/are shanties folk music? Unaccompanied songs to give rhythm to work. If so does it follow that African slaves, taking their music, combining it with what they learned at Sunday services became field songs at work. Unaccompanied singing, so they are folk songs? Was America the melting pot of all tradition, working people from the whole of Europe mixing, creating new traditions, for some reason Appalachia springs to mind.
In learning and recreating songs perhaps a century old, are recordings by the Carolina Chocolate Drops and Hot Club of Cowtown folk songs.
I’m not putting a foot in any camp, I’ve hinted before that I have a sixties and seventies connection with rural singing, hence tradition, possibly without fingers in my ear, folk clubs in that tradition, but who also hosted Fred Wedlock.
Nobody is right, or wrong?
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L’Arpeggiata is always worth a listen IMO. I think Christina Pluhar takes the view that the distinction between “art” music and folk/traditional music was a lot less rigid in the past. Many of L’Arpeggiata’s albums bridge that gap, though they are mostly more Europe-centred than Los Parajos Perdidos.
Roger
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If I remember correctly, the point about the South American project is, South American folk/traditional music was influenced by European baroque and the instruments brought to SA by the conquistadors.
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Interesting woman’s hour this morning. Peggy Seeger talking about white Anglo American folk music. Highly recommended.
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fascinating - thanks so much for flagging it up - just wanted to emphasise it is a full 50 odd minute special not just a 10 minute slot. and there is a discussion of the presence/absence of black voices in folk
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Good point - all contributions were well considered. Not a dud amongst them.
A fairly recent discovery.
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Agree entirely. I particularly enjoyed the contributions from Fay Hield and Rachel Newton (big fan).
Roger
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