My late adopted Mom was a Mennonite by birth and early upbringing. One of the more "fundamentalist" offshoots of that religious group is the Amish. A productive and peaceloving group which, for the most part, has siezed a place in time and decided to occupy it in perpetuity. A darker illustration would be of those Islamic fundamentalists who still reside, emotionally and practically, somewhere between the 7th and 9th centuries. Their choice.

But time does march on. New things are created. Many of us choose to celebrate and revere certain vestiges of our collective past, among which is "traditional" folk music. But nothing really exists as a snapshot in time. We constantly evolve, as does our music. Even the revered Child Ballads were not cut in stone but were, themselves - many of them, products of an evolutionary process. They were captured and written down at some point in that process.

If the problem some have is that few adhere to this music as originally performed, it is likely because audiences for such esoteric material are relatively few and mostly intellectual in leaning. Nothing wrong with that, just fact. If you fear that your music is going the way of the dodo, fear not. There will always be an audience somewhere. To you, Gordon Lightfoot isn't really a folk singer. He's just a composer/performer singing much in the "folk style." Dylan isn't really a folk singer, though he has written material that might qualify. Why quibble. Find, listen to and perform what you like. It's a big house with many rooms, at least one room for everybody.