Jim-
I'm familiar with the "official" 1954 definition and, frankly, I don't have a problem with it. If it's accepted in any discussion, though, you have to come up with a new classification for the music of Woody Guthrie, Martin Carthy, Pete Seeger and just about everyone who now fill the folkies' notion of what folk is. Earlier definitions required a rural background, or isolated communities or whatever. I remember this argument back in the 1940s and 50s, when people like MacColl and Lomax were attempting to expand the meaning of the word.

I still feel that there can be a multiplicity of definitions: Stylistic,
taxonomic, sociological etc. All that's necessary is that people agree on which they're using before they set out to demolish each other.