Little Hawk, you are right that "raditional life is far from finished in the less developed world and the less affluent societies and communities on this planet where the old traditional values are still very strong."

However, with the spread of mass communication means and the increasing dominance of multinational coroporations even in "underdeveloped" countries, traditional music is as much in danger of extinction as are the small, local, mom-and-pop businesses that used to be seen in most cities and villages.   To the extent that, whenever a song or poem catches the fancy of the public by 'word of mouth' (or YouTube), it gets grabbed, sanitized, Hollywood-ized, and somehow copyright protected by a record label, it becomes harder and harder for a real oral tradition or "folk tradition" to flourish.    That said, I don't think we should expect today's folk/traditional music to sound like that of the 17th C. any more than we should expect today's working class people to dress like their ancestors did several generations back.