It always seems to me that traditional Masses with traditional hymns were often genuinely "folk", in a way that "folk masses" virtually never are.

Much of the time the term tends to just mean a couple of strumming guitars and the occasional tambourine and remorselessly cheerful songs. But it doesn't have to be that way.

They do these things much better in Latin America I believe. One of the few hymns within the folk mass repertoire that can raise the hairs on your neck is the Peruvian Gloria. ("Glory to God x 3, Glory to the Father etc)

Obviously Taizé isn't folk music in its origins, but then nor is virtually all the music that gets used in this context. In its feeling I think Taizé has a far closer sense of tradition than most, and it gets through to a very wide range of people in a powerful way. Its the difference between chantband song whuc has come uop in another thread recently in a slightly different (buit not unrelated) context.