"put 'em on together at Philly Folk and you'd STILL have an overwhelmingly white audience because the GENRE just hasn't penetrated into the African-American community effectively."

The problem is, statements like that make an assumption about what the GENRE is.   Perhaps the festival has not penetrated the African-American community into the definition of what is supposed to be folk music.

Folk music is about a lot of different traditions.   For instance, why is blues considered a genre unto itself instead of a folk music, which it really is as it fits the definition given by most musicologists?   The problem is that the audiences that support events like Philly or Newport have a very set definition of what "folk music" is supposed to be.