It is a remarkably stupid and ill-informed comment. It does not appear to be limited to folk music, but on the face of it (the more so in context) appears to exclude song. It ignores the fact that Irish "traditional" music is a revival of a music that had largely died out (and large chunks of which were art music not folk music) and that most singers of Irish song are middle class pretending to have been throwing grenades in Dublin in 1922 and murdering the English with shillaleghs from about the 1500s to date. It also ignores the fact that most of the "revival" in the UK as far as I saw it (I was around but not interested in folk then) insofar as directed to English folk was more about song than tunes.

I have simplified some terms that I have used.