Oops! For want of hyphens, the kingdom was lost!

Well, not really. But let me add those hyphens and an additional word [!!] to that convoluted sentence-

If indeed blues is a genre of folk music, it differs from other types of folk music in at least one significant aspect-songs in the other types of folk music have no known composers, but most if not all of blues songs have known composers or-at least in the case of early blues-have musicians who credit themselves as the composer of that piece.

[Actually, I'd like to throw that entire sentence out and start all over again. But I hope you get my drift..."drift"=what I was trying to say.]