Heartland Concerts is an all volunteer folk and acoustic music series, presenting the finest in local, regional and national performers in the Rochester, New York area.

Your Editor's definition of World Music from a few issues ago is spot on, as are his comments on the f-word, but I'm disappointed he ducked the opportunity to define folk music once and for all. After being involved in a radio show and a festival for a few years, I've accumulated enough research to offer the following.

North American singer/songwriter definition. Folk is anything that includes, somewhere in the mix, however far buried beneath the synth, the too-loud snare drum and the four-piece horn section, an acoustic guitar. Electric guitar is OK if played by a singer/songwriter who might at one point have owned an acoustic guitar. If said singer/songwriter never owned an acoustic guitar then it still counts as long as they are trying to sound like Joni Mitchell (which covers 90% of all USA female examples) or Bob Dylan (likewise, male), or write songs containing the word "Dolphin". If you don't believe that this is true then try following any of the US-based "folk" email lists on any random day.

Alternative North American definition, folk-stroke-Celtic. Anything from anywhere in the British isles and/or Ireland and or anywhere else as long as there's a cover of "She Moved Through the Fair" on the CD and a minimum quotient of whooshy Enya-noises. Also, anything with a harp, particularly if played by Loreena McKennitt or anybody else who has received more than the UN-recommended maximum exposure to new-age crystal shops.

Australian/UK folk club definition. A folk song is any song of which more than twenty percent of the words have been forgotten during the course of any given performance. Any song containing the words shearer, drove, billy or tea (Australia) or any song beginning with two lines of meteorology (England) and/or taking place in the month of May, and/or having protagonists named Nancy and/or Willy making incomprehensible bargains with bent jewellery or murdering one another over verbal pre-nuptual agreements.

Universal no-exception totally watertight force-of-law definition: anything, absolutely anything, with a melodeon, is now and ever more shall be folk. This used to be true for banjos as well until the Flecktones came along, and it's almost entirely true for bouzoukis, citterns and their diverse bastard offspring. Concertinas are allowed to pretend not to be folk, and piano accordions are banned altogether unless played by Phil Cunningham or Karen Tweed. Fiddles turn into violins when played up at the dusty end and stop being folk, unless they are played in funny tunings in which case they are always folk, and even more so if they've got extra strings in funny places or are played by Chipolatas with kebab sticks. Any of the above, or anything else, is automatically folk when played by personages in flat hats or other ethnic costumes or by blokes wearing dresses.

Getting serious now for a minute, what folk really is, of course, is music with its roots in the past but its branches wherever they choose to grow. And, getting even more serious now, words do matter. The any-singer-songwriter-with-an-acoustic-guitar definition has made a complete nonsense of the term "folk", and it's time we rehabilitated it.

Used with the kind permission of Steve Barnes.