For me it's experiential.

I may not immediately recognize it as people like Jim who has studied it for years can,
but when I hear it I'm moved and transported to a different space. I can sit and listen enraptured to a trad ballad through thirty verses.

I like opera, jazz, popular music, classical music and some rock but it ain't folk.

i believe that it comes from working class people who express it without the idea
of becoming show business performers.

I've sung folk songs for years but I don't consider myself a traditional folk music singer.

I believe that Horton Barker, Texas Gladden, Margaret Barry, Jeannie Robertson, Iron Head Baker, Vera Hall, Buell Kazee, and others of this genre are really folk singers.

Field hollers, lullabies, dirty songs, foc'sle ditties, blues shouts, local ballads, stories handed down in songs,protest songs, singing expressions coming out of every day lives not made for the concert stage. the recording industry, or TV.

Great classical music composers have been inspired by it, Villa-Lobos, Schubert, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Bartok, Koday, Katchaturian..the list goes on.

I had help in discovering this from Alan Lomax, Pete Seeger and more from Bess Lomax Hawes, Alan's sister.

I was fortunate enough to hear traditional folk singers live in an environment that wasn't show business oriented but in the field. Hearing it live is the best and recordings don't do it justice.