If it's only a descriptor, why do 99% of enthusiasts adopt the unspoken part that says folk is old songs, accompanied by old instruments in an approximation of an old style? If that proportion, or something like it is correct, folk is something else. The argument as ever, is what that thing is? Many of us call it the folk revival to separate what happens on the ground from the theory.

If Linstead Market was regularly heard in dub version coming from festival speakers, or an electronica Lowlands rang through the clubs, we could safely abandon form as a fundamental, but it doesn't, so it probably is. Music is sound and the folk music of these islands is connected to the rest of the world by that DNA.