Yes it is Al - but not a minute number of clubs who have decided that they have no interest whatever in folk as it has been always understood, has a definition and i fully documented and archived as a specific type of music.
The vast majority of 'The Folk' have no interest in folk music in any shape, form or definition - we have totally failed to involve them in any way.
If any club is going to decide to change that definition they have to say what it has been changed to, they have to give the reasons why it has changed and they have to gain some sort of a consensus - if that doesn't happen the term becomes meaningless and we cease to anybody ese
This is what has happened in the 'anything goes' clubs.
Pop music, jazz, classics - whatever, is not folk music in any shape or form - not better or worse, just different.
I gave up "words mean what I want them to mean" when I stopped reading Alice in Wonderland.
If you are drawing audiences into folk clubs and not giving them folk music you are conning them and you are nausing it up for those of us who have some idea of what it is.
By the way - you are not in the majority, as you claim - you have no consensus, no definition, no history, no documented evidence, no archived examples and no credibility - we have
You are dispirit groups who can't even reach a consensus among yourselves other than "words mean what I want them to mean" - and you've managed to do an enormous amount of damage to an extremely important music.
Jim Carroll