Well Harper's marginally less barking than Donovan (give or take a sheep or two), no more irrelevant than John Martyn and will probably manage to be more in tune than Don MacLean, so it's probably a minuscule improvement in the Folk Awards tradition. Which is probably the only time the word 'tradition' will be linked with any of those three. Oh, but Harper did a song about cricket so he must be folk. And he lives in Ireland, so that's folky too.