quote: I hope that Tony is wrong. The UK's trove of folk treasures deserved to be heard.

Musicmick, you're mixing up two different ideas:

1. Traditional music should be preserved.
I agree completely and am very active in that preservation.

2. The term "folk music" can only be used to mean traditional music.
Good luck with that. Maybe you should talk to the French Academy. In English (or, as it really should be called now, American), usage determines the meaning of a word.

I often wonder how the preservation of traditional music is affected by its being associated with people who get bent out of shape at the use of a word to mean what 99% of the population think it means. If the general public ever does become aware of the music described in that 1950-whatever definition, they'll almost certainly call it "nerd music."