"What people usually mean by tradition is old-fashioned or just plain old (I think even I qualify there!)."
Not really - otherwise, by your own statement, Domingo would be a traditional singer - surely you're not arguing that he is?
Tradition, when applied to a specific activity, dance, stories, customs, music..... is more than mere repetition and, if communities still have a use for the practice referred to, it does not necessarily have to be "old". It is part of the identifying definition of a specified activity, a reference to the process that it has passed through in order to have arrived at where it did, in the form that it finally took.
"Folk" is equally a part of the definition; a direct reference to the song's/story's/custom's/dance's origins - the people who made it, remade it and adopted it as a part of their culture.
Jim Carroll