Darowyn, right off, your use of words like "authoritarian" and "democratic" (normally political terms, each with its own emotional baggage) in this context is loaded against what you consider "authoritarian."

The "authoritarian" viewpoint in question, such as the infamous 1954 definition, comes from those who are steeped in the material and know it as well as it is possible to know it: song collectors, ethnomusicologists, and folklorists. I will take the word of someone like Cecil Sharp or Alan Lomax a lot quicker than I will take that of someone who knows next to nothing about traditional folk music, but writes his or her own songs and wants them to be given instant acceptance and an immediate stamp of approval by the simple but deceptive expedient of calling them "folk songs." Or from someone who want to sing songs by Jacques Brel and finds he can get an instant audience by finding a "folk club" that is sufficiently "democratic" that it's very looseness constrains it to embrace anything that anyone cares to offer.

And—if one wants to sing and be listened to by others, one must earn the privilege by knowing the material, and performing it sufficiently well that the audience doesn't start looking around desperately for the nearest exit. "I don't have to be able to sing well because I sing folk songs," is simply unacceptable.

This doesn't mean one has to be able to offer competition to singers like Dmitri Hvorostovsky or Renée Fleming. Dave Van Ronk had a voice like a rusty hinge, but boy! could he put a song across!

Don Firth