I thought Jim C. said some very interesting stuff there. Though I do also rather like Glueman's Gnostic analogy below: "People know what folk is when they hear it and sing it, they don't need a priestly class to mediate it for them."

Otherwise, threads like this... I guess it matters much to some, but I'd guess it's the energy of personal investment and such, that err results in a 'need' for a definitive answer or conclusion. Human existence tends to 'happen' in some ways I guess, and thus we describe (and then attempt to define) what happens for pragmatic purposes of communicating those tendencies with other people. IMO, nothing that happens is 'real' as such, apart from what 'tends to happen'.

Yes Folk 'is': something happens, and we describe it as 'folk'.

Bums, it's all too much...!