One thing about electrics is they haven't yet developed them to the state where they are really self-contained and portable, and that's where they always lose out compared to acoustic music.

I mean, a penny whistle or a harmonica can slip in a pocket, a fiddle or a guitar or a concertina you can carry anywhere. Take it out of your pocket or out of its case, and you can make music anywhere. Standing on a street corner, sitting in a bar, in a kitchen, on a train, on a boat.

Electric instruments, and there's amplifiers and microphones, and a power supply to worry about. And even with portable amps and batteries it's clumsy compared to being acoustic.

They've got their place and there's good music to be got out of them. And in some settings without some kind of PA no one will be able to hear what's going on. And they enable combinations of instruments that could never occur in the natural world - mountain dulcimer and hurdy-gurdy for example.

But it won't be until the technology comes up with electric instruments that have the flexibility and portability of the acoustic instruments that they'll really feel like folk instruments. And I've no doubt that will come. (In fact someone is likely going to report that it already has in some cases.)