Just wanted to post this - it was my response to an ongoing discussion on one of my email lists as to what makes a song a "folk song."

Someone stated, as part of one definition of folk music, that "Folk songs communicated the hopes, sorrows and convictions of ordinary people's everyday lives." Well, those of us who are writing songs in the folk genre (like me) are still doing this. (Somebody had to write those old folk songs - just because we often don't know WHO wrote them doesn't mean that no one wrote them, although songs often evolve through the "folk process" as they are interpreted by others - and I have seen this happen to songs written by songwriters who are very much alive and still writing, such as John Prine, Joan Baez and Eric Bogel, just to name a few.) The present-day writer of "folk" songs is someone who has her eyes and ears open to what is going on in the hearts and minds of ordinary people (the "folk"), and turns her observations into songs. If they are about her own life, she is careful to write about those things in her life with which other people can identify. Sandy Andina's wonderful song about her late father's chromatic harmonica and the role that it had in his life and hers is a good example. Everyone eventually experiences the loss of a loved one, and most people, once they get past the grieving, have treasured objects that memorialize the love they felt for that person.

I do not believe that the number of chords in a song has anything to do with whether or not it's a folk song. Harry Chapin's songs, which I have tried to learn for one occasion or another, have, as my trad-folk guitar-god significant other, Phil Cooper, would say, way too many chords. But who would say "Taxi" does not paint a word picture of a type of situation that almost everyone experiences at least once in their life, that it does not speak to the experience of the "folk?" On the other hand, John Prine's songs, at least his more famous earliers ones, such as "Paradise," "Sam Stone," and "Angel From Montgomery," tend to have four chords at most, but the simple melodies and arrangements do not make these songs any less powerful. On the other hand, a song can have full rock-band instrumentation and still be a folk song (many of Richard Thompson and Bruce Springsteen' s songs are folk songs by this definition).

I am told that Tom Paxton, one of the most prolific of modern folk songwriters (in the sense of speaking to what is going on the hearts and minds of the "folk") tells students in his songwriting workshops that one of the best ways to learn how to write a folk song is to find a story in a newspaper that appeals to them, and to write a song about it, preferably with the main character in the song being of the opposite gender - a great exercise for anyone who wants to break out of the narrowly personal or love song modes, IF they want to do so. Not that love songs cannot be folk songs - they can if they speak to the experience of many people without reusing the same old tired cliches that tend to be repeated ad nauseum in love songs (something which, I am sad to say, has always eluded me as a songwriter). My dear friend, (folk) songwriter Kathryn Morski, has a song about love that has lasted many years. It contains a line that goes, "The stars are always the same, the river always is new; if love means that you are my stars and my river, then I love you!" A beautiful way for those of us who have been in long-term loving relationships to put into words what that feels like! As Mel Brooks said, "Everybody sings, I have the mouth." That is what writers of folk songs do.

And, since the people in the music business continue to insist that there is no market for folk songs, most of us who write them are not going to make it to the big time. I accepted that long ago. The important thing to me is watching an audience and seeing people moved to thought, laughter or tears by the folk songs that I have been privileged to pen (this includes many young people, who tell me they had no idea that they liked folk music until they had a chance to hear it, a chance which the music industry does not, for the most part, give them). BTW, I say "my songs" in the same way as I say "my friend" or, maybe more accurately, "my cat." The characters and situations in the songs have a life of their own, and I consider myself nothing but a humble transmitter. Nonetheless, I consider my "assignment" in this life to be to listen for these songs, to bring them to life through words and music, and to share them with others. I have been moved, comforted and made to laugh many times in my 56 years by songs written by folksingers. Thus I feel that I owe it to the folk tradition to carry it on, even if this means reaching only one person at a time. DISCLAIMER: this is my opinion only, and does not pretend to be the final word from any conception of the "Great Whatever." --Susan Urban