"Subjective opinion in other words, to which you're entitled."
As ever, you appear to deal only in dismissive cliches - "subjective is dismissing out-of-hand over a century's research and experience to justify your own approach to singing and lack of research - you have never at any time put forward and argument for why everybody else got it wrong and your pontifications (no great argument put forward for those either) are right.
Like your approach to ballads - that's been done before; Dave Harker fell at the first fence thirty years ago with a similar approach - his out-with-the-baby and-the-bathwater technique and, as with you, his refusal to discuss his pronouncements tripped him up somewhat.
If anything confirms your 'folkie' pedigree, it's your wonderful "TV evagelised Celtic Woman Sean Nos" - straight out of the American "Oirish" scene.
Sean nos is a term applied, not entirely satisfactorily, to such "evagelised Celtic Woman" as Joe Heaney, Sean McDonagh, Nicholas Tobin and Darach O'Cathain - don't know what incursions into the subject you have made so far but try 'Bright Star of the West' (discussion of Joe Heaney's singing), 'On a Rock in the Middle of the Ocean' (songs and singers of Tory Island) or the superb 'Hidden Ulster' (Six counties Irish Language singing).
Steve
"but it doesn't stop me from enjoying the ways all of this music has evolved in a multiplicity of ways over the last century."
Doesn't stop me enjoying it either, but nor does it stop me from saying why regurgitated styles of singing (that have long been rejected by the revival that once gave it an audience) don't work on ballads for me.
"Nowadays it HAS a multiplicity of meanings to the MAJORITY of people "
NO IT HAS NOT - "the majority of people" don't give a toss - 'folk' has totally failed to connect with them. The only time the word "folk" passes the lips of the "majority" of Britons is when it is prefixed by "an everyday story of country...."It is only within the revival that the definition/non definition discussion takes place.
This is what makes these arguments so crass - there has been a level of success in Ireland by a return to the source - especially important is the fact that the youngsters are playing it enthusiastically, well and in great numbers.
Whereas, back in the UK.......... !!!! a hand-to-mouth existence seems to be the best description in most cases - largely due to the fact you no longer get to choose your music when you go to a folk club, but have to accept which particular (non) 'brand' is favoured by each individual club.
Until that situation changes it will continue to be the researched and documented consensus definition which survives - not a great deal of disagreement there.
Jim Carroll