The fault line is the us/them thing. Is folk the music of the masses or not? If it isn't, who's music is it? Is Cajun or Zydeco a Frankenstein of some devalued primal form, or grown up music sold on the market place?
To be taken seriously, serious folk has to decide if the meat is in the tradition, the sound, the label or the chap doing the playing? To paraphrase art, is everything a folk musician does folk? Is mushroom soup any less authentic if it's sold as consomme champignon in a fancy restaurant, or to be posh, is the form inscribed in the delivery.
Nobody seems to have the answer including the man at 1954.