Folk music (by most people's definition that inimates a "style" vs. a more narrow definition which demands "provenance") is HUGE in the USA...

-It has several publications devoted to it

-Festivals that are attended by much greater numbers than ever before

-Its purveyors are among some of the most respected musicians in the country.

-Musical instrument makers who cater to folk musicians are busier than ever before, creating better instruments than ever before (now it's no longer a Martin/Gibson world -- there's Collings and Santa Cruz and Huss&Dalton and Larrivee and Dudenbostel and Merrill and Lucas and Kemnitzer and, and , and,).

If EVER there was a time to grow up interested in this type of music it is now. Never in our history has so much been so accessible...

...Never before in our history have such small "acts" -- individual singer songwriters, small string bands -- had such access to a commercial world once held at bay by major record labels that held too much power and influence.

...Never before have the mysteries of musicianship been so readily and easily uncovered by the uncountable numbers of workshops, clinics, published materials. Things that I, as a budding musician in the 60s and 70s had no way of discovering if the accident of life hadn't placed me in the presence of those in the know.