I get very angry when I see the term 'singer-songwriter' used so disparagingly in some of these posts.

Who by? Which posts? Genuinely puzzled here.

Snail: It seems to be the non-1954 definitioners that are turning Folk into a religion.

There certainly seems to be a lot of resistance to the idea that there are good and bad folk performances - that you can be bored to tears by something that's undeniably folk or transported to another dimension by something that undeniably isn't.