I'm with McGrath. There's room for it all surely. I personally avoid the World Music Soup where every thing gets simmered together into a mush, and it IS getting a bit difficult to get away from it. I'm grateful to the people who preserve old styles.
The combinations of folk styles has sometimes worked magic in the past - notably in North America. Whatever you may say about other aspects of American culture, something very special happened there when Hillbillies met Cajuns, when Africans met Europeans. It hasn't happened yet with the "folk music" combinations we are hearing today I don't think, but maybe I'm getting old and cranky. It was also in America that Engish ballads got isolated in the mountains and were preserved and saved for us in their old style. Both preservation and change are important. Joy