"But the 10% I can't support, are aspects of your views on music culture as it is right now,"
Punk was interesting until it became commodified - don't think it ever represented or communicated much, in the way folk song did/does (if you open your mind to it)
It became as disposable as any other type of music with a shelf-life that didn't allow it to become anything really - don't know too much about Indie, so can't comment.
As far as I know, these, and rap are claimed from birth by their authors - if they are commercially viable they become fixed.
Because numbers of people listen to a music doesn't make it necessarily theirs and it certainly doesn't make it folk.
Go to south Wales and you'll find ex mining villages singing opera (someone once conned the Welsh into believing they could sing!!) - does that make Verdi or Bizet folk - don't think so really.
One of the characteristics off pop song is that it comes with a sell-by date - most of our folk songs have lasted centuries and it their progress through time and space that makes them folk.
We have become passive recipients of our musical culture - any claim we have to it is what we buy - we have no input into its creation and we can't re-create it without paying for the right to do so because it belongs to somebody other than 'the folk' - so how can it evolve or adapt and become somebody else's?
Jim Carroll