i did a little bit of searching around and got a really interesting reply form a guy named Tony Ziselberger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. his was an interesting reply and below is what he said, i didnt mention Joni at all in the mail i sent him, so i chuckled when he mentioned her! i think this could finally settle the question of "is Joni's music folk music?", and certainly helps us, in some respects, decide on what we think folk music is. GARRET >>> The definition of Folk Music depends on who you ask. We don't discuss definitions at our conference as it creates fights and Ill will among our membership if we try to define it. Below, from a posting on IRTRAD, the Irish Traditional Music discussion list, is the International Folk Music Council's definition. I don't know who the international Folk Music Council is, but their definition is in keeping with the current views of many academic folklorists. Before the 1960's, most academic folklorists concentrated on the piece of music as an artifact, looking at its origin analyzing the piece of music itself and its origin. During the late 1960's and '70's academic there was a paradigm shift and folklorists began looking at the communities that produced the music, rather than the piece of music itself. Here's the definition: "Folk music is the product of a musical tradition that has been evolved through the process of oral transmission. The factors that shape the tradition are; (1) continuity, which links the present to the past; (2) variation, which springs from the creative impulse of the individual or the group; (3) selection by the community, which determines the form, or forms, in which the music survives. later added. (i) The term folk music can be applied to music that has has been evolved from rudimentary beginnings by a community uninfluenced by popular or art music and it likewise can be applied to music which has originated with an individual composer and has subsequently been absorbed into the unwritten living tradition of a community; (ii) The term does not cover popular composed music that has been taken over ready-made by a community and remains unchanged, for it is the re-fashioning and re-creation of the music by the community which gives it its folk character. If you ask a record company person, Folk music is something different. Its acoustic music, sometimes political, often deeply personal, created by singer/songwriters, growing out of the 1960's folk boom. Contemporary "folk" artists would include Ani DiFranco, John Gorka and Shawn Colvin (just as examples) their ancestors being Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. Academic folklorists do not consider this to be folk music, but instead a form of mass-marketed popular music which is labeled as "folk" for the convenience of marketers and consumers.The comment I've heard from more than one folklorist, just to confuse you, is "If it says folk on the cover, it ain't". To us, anyone willing to label themselves or their music as "folk" be they ancient mountain ballad singers, hip hop artists, Turkish Saz players, or contemporary acoustic singer/songwriters, is welcome to join the club. I'm not sure where to aim you for resources. A book on the subject of "what is folk music?" would be gauranteed to bore millions and would be necessarily incomplete. A folklorist reccomended that I check out "Toward New Perspectives in Folklore, published by the University of Texas Press back in the early 1970's but I haven't yet read it.
