Whether one takes a sealed or open-ended view of folk music there are consequences. If entirely past tense it is re-enactment, jolly re-enactment among friends and perhaps even a community of sorts but positively loaded with contradiction if not irony. The 1954 close readers appear not be big on irony which is a shame because there are worse things than let's pretend, even let's pretend we're hearty.

The open-enders OTOH have the problem of determining what isn't folk. Designated folk context doesn't quite do it for me - though I can totally see where it's coming from - and the solution isn't to return to the Old Irreducibles of 54 if you believe the instinct still runs through living, breathing, folk.
That makes folk easier to discern than define, more an approach than a sound, a mood not a setting, mercurial not fixed. Which is what most living breathing types decided for themselves long ago, so long ago they were still writing and singing the old music.
To paraphrase a kosher desert father, when two or more are gathered and decide it's folk, folk it certainly is.