The Folk Process only becomes occult when people assume 1) the songs are anomalous products of a community rather than the deliberate work of individuals (i.e. not seeing the trees/i> for the wood) and 2) that it's unique to - er - folk music. Such a process is the common creative, communal & cultural factor of all musics from King Crimson to Joy Division to Peter Maxwell Davies to 50 Cent. The problem with folk music is it's been largely defined from the outside; it is a perceived music, one that comes into being through being collected & dissected by antiquarians and academics - unlike, say, Punk & Hip-Hop (etc.) which are defined on the street (i.e. their very natural habitat) as part of their very essence and aren't, therefore, too hung up on the back-catalogue.

I've known some great & truly Traditional Musicians - like Matt, and Tom Walsh and dozens of others - whose dedicated familiarity with the music becomes a springboard for another level of Traditional Musical Creativity. I've known a few songwriters like this too - Ron Baxter is such a one - whose craft is keenly defined by a very definite native understanding which manifests in Traditional Songs. Wasn't Jim saying back there that we needed such people least folk became the Sealed Knot? Genres & Idioms operate as language; living, breathing, evolving, but ultimately determined by the inner structural & creative mechanisms of the individual human brain which comes into focus by interfacing with the cultural context in which it finds itself.