could you now clarify what you would call the domestic, participatory singing culture, handed down through generations,

It's just music, Brian - what human beings have always done through the generations. To pull it apart and favour one type of song over another all and call it The Tradition is divisive and inaccurate. The condition of Human Music Making is always far bigger than that - it is now, and it always has been. Exhibit A:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sn2UTXDIDCA

I'm not sure what 'the Colonial Revival' is (I presume you've invented the term)

Maybe I did, but I'm thinking of English speaking former colonies (Australia / America) where the old songs took root and thrived and morphed along with pretty much everything else. I'm also thinking of an inner sort of colonialism too, implicit in the paternalism of the revival and its well-heeled origins.

*

post-Steamfolk

What? Already? I only thought of it on Saturday...

er..... or should that be "neo-Steampunk"?

Neo-post-revival-Steamfolk sounds about right to me. I've always loved the idea of Post-Revival Folk - and hope that a new breed of rigorous academics are poised to begin collecting what happens now in The Name O' Folk and putting it into cryogenic storage for another projected Golden Age, say maybe 1,000 years hence when it'll burst forth its pristine magnificence and Folk Purity to educate our unenlightened descendents on how to things right. Maybe a new breed of Folk Missionaries will emerge to take Folk to other planets, then on Mudcat circa 3,011 AD we'll be seeing threads like How can we convert the Zaarghans of Planet Zaargh X to Folk? For sure, if they do have their own musical traditions, they'll be of little interest to deaf-assed future folkies (who'll have evolved so that they only hear Folk Music) though hopefully some of those sexy Zaarghan dance-beat stars will make it onto the cover of Froots, which by that time will be purely telepathic.