To discuss folk music, you first have to agree on a definition. Are you talking about the musicologist's definition? Or the music of the Sixtie's Folk Revival? Or contemporary folk singers? For much of the last fifty years, musicians tended to avoid being associated with the "folk" label- because they considered it to be commercial suicide. But almost every modern musical genre is based on some type of folk music, and more and more musicians have been paying attention to their folk roots in recent years. It has become fashionable again to call yourself a writer of folk songs.

To learn more about contemporary folk singers, a good starting point would be the Ballad Tree. This page is hosted by a successful working folk singer named Hugh Blumenfeld. He puts together original feature articles and links to other Web resources, and he even hunts down folk MP3s and catalogs them!

Moving beyond Hugh's site, you can find many more folk-related websites by utilizing the Folk Music Webring . Another invaluable source of information is the Smithsonian Folkways website. This is a commercial site, designed to sell CDs, but they provide a lot of history in the process. Most importantly, they provide lots of samples of the early folk recordings.

In the print world, Sing Out! magazine and Dirty Linen have been reporting on the folk world for many years. The best reference work is MusicHound Folk- providing bios and discographys for virtually every recorded folk singer or group.