"That's one of the problems of assuming "folk" is an - albeit contentious - genre rather than a description of a supposedly universal human process regardless of content."

Spleen Cringe - thank you for that brilliant sentence.   I have been trying to get that point across in several conversations that I've had - here on Mudcat and elsewhere but could never come up with the right words. Your eloquent statement says it all.

I'm afraid that there are too many people who have created a stereotype of what folk music should sound like. If it doesn't remind them of the teenage girl with long black hair strumming a guitar or the bearded gent with a finger in his ear that they heard 50 years ago, it can't possibly be considered folk and those of us who attempt to look at modern communities for "contemporary" folk music are just out of our minds or know nothing.