"Do people like Jim Carroll attract or deter young people from playing traditional music and bringing their own contemporary sensibilities to it?"
This thread has nothing whatever to do with bringing people to traditional music - it is solely about the nature and definition of traditional music.
In Ireland, young people are flocking to traditional music in their thousands. This has happened, not by compromise or distortion of the music, but because a clear idea of what traditional music is has enabled groups like The Willie Clancy Summer School and CCE to present the music to a wide, young and expanding audience.
Last St Patrick's Day here in Miltown Malbay (a small coastal village) there were between 80 and 100 school-age musicians playing traditional music on the parade.
Contrast this with the fact that the British clubs lost three quarters of their audiences in the 80s when it became possible to attend a folk club without hearing a folk song. That audience has never been replaced.
The Singers Club was a policy club which guaranteed that the audince would go away having heard an evening of folk songs, or contemporary songs based on (and sounding like) folk songs. The club continued to have a regular and substantial following right up to the death of MacColl. It closed when it's other prominent resident returned to America.
Jim Carroll