I don't like the "folk music" label

I want to reject putting Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Laura Nyro, Phil Ochs, Tim Buckley, and their peers in the ghetto of "folk."  I don't think their music has anything to do with folk music. I'm not sure if it's rock, either. It leans on the American song tradition and on jazz. It draws from folk music too, but goes so far beyond it that it deserves another name.

I think in the years 1967-74 they were creating something wholly new and radical, something not heard before, something I think was dismissed at the time with the "folk" label. Even "singer/songwriter" doesn't satisfy me as a label, it describes what they are but not what they did.

Consider the storm of scorn and criticism Ochs got for wanting to be like Elvis (after Dylan's own famous problems. And now we think of it as Dylan "going electric". Like it's one way? You can't ever "go acoustic" after you've "been electric"??). People had categories in their minds and those categories had real consequences. Or look at the San Francisco bands of the period. The Dead and Airplane came from a bluegrass/folk scene, didn't they?

Maybe some of the divide between folk and rock was a class divide, that mirrored the race divide of the 1950's. Rock was seen as working class and greasy, while folk was seen as college educated and clean. As Dylan was told in "Talkin' New York," "You sound like a hillbilly, we want folksingers here!"