"Lack of author or age of song do not make a genre. Musical style does"
Style does not - origins and process does.
'folk' refers to the culture of a specific group
"exclusion of many excellent contemporary songs"
Copyright laws exclude many of them from belonging to the folk - whether they are excellent or crap.
Lst night a crowd of us watched a nearly ninety-year-old piper/singer/fluteplayer being interviewed.
He was well respected as a musician by his peers, was a part of the London Irish music scene in ts heyday, had performed with two of Ireland's leading ceili bands and was a long-term competition winner, having once been beaten into second place by one of Irland's greatest traditional pipers, Felix Doran.
He said he was extremely proud to see thousands of young musicians ener the scene, take up the music and become top class at it in a short time - far better than he could ever have hoped to be, even though he and many others of his generation might not like or approve of where they are taking the music.
We took that to be an indication that all is well with traditional music in Ireland today
All very satisfying
Jim Carroll