There appear to be the usual and possibly deliberate misunderstandings here. And, Al, it is nothing at all to do with post-imperial guilt.

It is also nothing at all to do with form.

Folk arts of all kinds (crafts, dance, music, song and doubtless others too) are distinct because of their derivation. Therefore any attempt to define "folk" has to be cross-cultural. Two things follow from that.

First there is a great deal to be said in favour of the Karpeles definition, although bits of it could do with some tweaking not least to do with the modern widespread emancipation (sic) of communication.   I would suggest that a requirement for unknown authorship is probably obsolete. Also some qualification of the meaning of "community". And if you bother to read it it does not purport to set folk music in aspic. It expressly allows for addition to the canon.

Second, until there is at least SOME agreement on what "folk music" is, this thread is largely meaningless.

Now, Raggy, it is your analogy that is senseless. "Theatre" is a form, as is "music" - but there are types of theatre that differ from others. Perhaps the single most obvious would be mumming plays - mostly traditional, mostly of unknown origin, and mostly nothing like Japanese NO theatre (which has its own rules and conventions).    Nobody is saying that music of known authorship is not music. Thereby your argument falls entirely.

So what do I think is happening in the marketplace? Most places where one may perform or participate in performing farouche music see less Karpeles definition song. This may well be true of participative events associated with house events and concerts. I prefer to go to things where there is more Karpeles definition song, and indeed at Forgotten Lands two years ago (it wasn't called "Forgotten Lands" then, it was just a private party at Stepping Stones Barn, for maybe 40 people but with most performance via a VERY good sound rig) and I did a little set of traditional mostly chorus songs (well, one was trad arr Burns) and I had a number of ppl seek me out to say how much they enjoyed and missed the sort of stuff that I had done. There might have been half a dozen people under 40 and this year there were more and a couple under 20.

They also much loved the sound of my then latest guitar acquisition - a 12 string Daion jumbo, intoned and set up and fitted with a B-band system using an undersaddle and a stick-on contact strip and stereo outputs by Brian Rodgers. But I disgress.

On the other hand at a house concert in leafy Leatherhead recently, the pre-concert session was mostly contemporary involving several guitars (including two 60 year old or more Martins, a very rare guitar with a three-letter name which I have forgotten - AYL or something like that, and an all ebony guitar which I think is the only one like that in the world, a cahon and a mandolin and a quantity of massed voices) - and I think everyone enjoyed that too - and the youngest person there by about 10 years would have been 44 and she plays wholly contemporary pop stuff and last year I heard her described at another festival as the performer most improved over the year.

So I don't think that the quality of the music is in the general proximity of what might be called folk-ish music declining - but I do wish that people would use accurate descriptors for what they do - harking back to Martin Carthy's exemplary description so long ago of himself as a "folk-song-singer" rather than a "folk singer".

On the other hand there isn't half some dogshit in hip-hop and rap! And the occasional jewel.