PR - posters on this thread have insisted folk music has an exceptional quality to it. I'm still asking what it is? I'm not being obtuse, I can hear subject matter, musical modes and presentation that suggests folkishness but none that are exclusive enough to justify those who say only traditional music has these qualities.

Traditional music provided a template for the future with the different qualities alluded to. If Bert Lloyd records twenty traditional songs but only has a first verse to go on for the 21st and embellishes the rest based on the idiom he's familiar with, is that song audibly different to the others? If there's no difference I can hear, no nuance, stylistic trait or whatever the characteristics lie in the textual origins, fascinating in their way but of no consequence to a living music.
Intellectually, those who say they prefer traditional music exclusively because of the way it sounds simply haven't thought the matter through.